


Never Ever Wanted To Be So Bad

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, The Wolves of Mercy Falls - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Wolves of Mercy Falls, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Night Stands, POV Multiple, Past Child Abuse, Past Drug Addiction, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:46:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They always ran away from the past that haunted them. </p><p>The rake of fingers over skin, raising hell on plains of flesh. The swinging fist, perpetual in motion.</p><p>The bar wasn't the first decision that let them run away further, futile as the past was stuck onto their backs. But it was the first decision that changed anything. And that was what counted.</p><p>It started with a pick up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. what if we lost our minds

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU based on Maggie Stiefvater's The Wolves of Mercy Falls Trilogy.

**ADAM**

They were in a club in DC when Adam met him.

Sweat soaked and dried up steadily through his dark blue dress shirt, his shoes scuffing the alcohol-sticky floor below his stool. Bodies jumped and rocked to the beat of the heavy bass behind him, the noise coming out through the surround-sound speakers placed around the building. Women and people alike, with their heavily colored lips and cheeks, ordered drinks as heavy as the layers on their faces, but for what they were drinking to, Adam was not likely to ever find out. Gazes bore holes onto the back of Adam’s head, his sticky shirt, and his bleached jeans.

Adam picked up his glass and took a careful sip of self-indulgence, too sweet to be alcoholic, and too small to be cheap. It buffed down the jagged corners of his mind, filled his head with a buzz, enough to make him remember that he was intending to attract the eyes of many, if only for tonight.

A body slid into the space next to him. An arm brushed up to his. Adam’s walls came up again, out of reflex, before remembering himself and urging them back down.

At first, Adam’s line of sight was assaulted by dark lines—a tattoo—, then his nose was assaulted by the smell of sweat, musk, and something that reminded Adam of the deeply wooded areas from his childhood.

Adam’s only-functioning ear could barely hear anything over the music but his arms, which had brushed up to the stranger’s, felt the imprint of sounds, vibrations seeping through every part of his body, stoking at the fires at his core.

He came here for exactly that, for someone to touch or to be touched by.

The lights spun around him just as the man had spun around to face Adam.

The stranger was a razor sharp, in every sense of the word; with a gaze that tore through Adam’s partially raised walls, the lethal lift of his brow, and the dagger-like hooks of the tattoo by his shoulder. The party went out of focus, making way for this stranger’s presence.

His wardrobe, Adam observed, was simultaneously open and guarded: black tank that said _ANARCHY_ , tight leather jacket tied loosely by his waist, with piercings on his left ear, leather bracelets around thin wrists, and ripped jeans. He was a walking six feet-something clad in black and donning a shaved head. He was an adult with a teenager’s wardrobe.

Somehow, Adam was glad that this stranger was the first pinned gaze on the back of Adam’s dress shirt to look him in the eye like _he_ was the sharp focus in this constantly moving world around them.

“You seemed pretty lonely up here by yourself,” the man started, with the easy rumble of his baritone voice, with what was probably the most cliché conversation starter Adam’s heard many times. Not even five seconds and Adam already knew where this was going. The man’s blue eyes were oversaturated under the flickering blue lights of the club, full of intent that Adam’s planned wardrobe expressed, and something else.

“I’m actually with the many-armed being writhing on the dance floor right now,” Adam replied with an amused tone and that easy upward tilt to his lips. The other man grinned, and it was gentle and all too sudden, like Adam’s humor was an unexpected factor to this conversation.

“Wouldn’t’ve pinned _you_ as the type,” the sharp man replied with his soft grin, and Adam, once more, felt the vibrations of the man’s voice whisper to the center of his gravity. There was an imprint of a lilt, remnants of a Southern accent that made Adam warm up to him better.

“And what type would that be?” Adam asked, sipping on his drink once more, but keeping his eyes on the other man.

The man backed up onto the empty stool behind him, which had been empty in the amount of time that they’d been talking and time that Adam had been too distracted to notice. His handsome face, with its charming smile, suddenly faltered. His smile stretched out, but his brows made way for a familiar expression that did not fit this hulking stranger: nervousness.

He dropped his gaze from Adam’s to look at his thin wrist, bringing it up to his face but bringing it back down on second thought. The hesitance made something stir in Adam, something akin to restlessness. The man grabbed for his glass instead, and gave Adam a look through his thick lashes that was almost read as shy.

Adam was pretty sure that it _was_ shy.

“I maybe-kind of thought you were going to turn me away the moment I walked up,” the man answered in this shy way, that made Adam grin. A wave came over the back of Adam’s mind, a surge of euphoria from confirmed premonitions.

A person like Adam Parrish—no, _Adam Parrish himself_ intimidated this stranger and his strong presence just by existing, just by sitting on this stool by the bar for the last fifteen minutes.

The softness of the stranger’s smile was beginning to get to him, like a contagious habit from a roommate or a driving point during a debate. It was digging into Adam’s head, making sure it was remembered and nesting in there. Adam felt his face relax into a genuine smile that was less flirtatious than before, though his voice persisted.

He said, “So I’m _that_ type of guy, huh?”

The man shook his sagely, which made Adam laugh because of the seriousness of the action. “What am I then?”Adam prompted.

A whiff of whiskey passed Adam by, reminding him of where he was, currently. There were fewer gazes on his back, he felt, now that he was talking to this charming stranger. The party music had mellowed into a slow-sounding beat, followed by an electronic sound crooning through the speakers. Perfect make out music, his mind supplied uselessly. There were less people around the bar, and the humidity had decreased, meaning that there were less people on the dance floor too.

Those facts made Adam feel a little lighter than he already was, sitting next to this virtual stranger. At least he wasn’t as nervous as he’d think he would be.

The stranger’s fist clenched and unclenched, clearly nervous with what he was going to say next. Another thrill went up Adam’s spine, tickled at the back of his head. Adam locked gazes with him and found that he’d already been looking at Adam. He’d seen the way that Adam had swept his gaze around the club, and had seen the way Adam had swept his gaze from this man’s boots to the solid gaze of his blue eyes, and he said nothing about it.

The air was charged with something, before the man answered with a simple “You’re _you_ ,” and Adam thought that was probably the most charming someone could have been in a place like this, where people came to lose themselves to the bodies of other people or to the liquid concoction they bought for themselves.

The man fiddled with his leather bracelets unconsciously, throwing Adam out of the loop for the thousandth time that evening. The way that this stranger was nervous and thrilled that he was speaking with Adam, it made Adam feel less pressured to remember that this night was temporary. He replayed their conversation in his head, repeating words uttered with confidence and nervousness.

Adam’s throat dried and constricted.

They were both new to this.

“I hope I didn’t read you wrong but,” the man spoke up. Adam pulled himself out of his train of thought to hear the rest of the sentence. “Would you mind if we…?” He quickly pointed at the exit with a thumb, trying to appear casual. There was a slight shake the way he did it that convinced Adam otherwise. Adam just hoped that his legs making the stool squeak underneath him wouldn’t be interpreted as impatience.

There was a pause, as the stranger let Adam weigh his options for a second.

Adam looked at those startlingly blue eyes, the color of the summer sky above the forest hugging the roads back home, and found that he wouldn’t be able to say no to this stranger. That was dangerous, but in the way that made the heat in Adam’s head travel south.

Adam moved to stand without an answer, surprising the other man for a split second. He followed, his boots making a sound on the sticky floor, surprising Adam with his height.

“I don’t mind much but, how am I going to be sure that you’re not gonna murder me or steal from me?” Adam asked casually, with no joking tone. The other man slipped his hands into his jean pockets, chuckling. Adam took a deep breath.

“I can give you my jacket,” he prompted just as casually as Adam had asked, waving off Adam’s accusation. This suggested that the man was probably used to the accusation that he was dangerous, and Adam felt bad for a split second, before the man continued with, “My phone’s in the left pocket. I don’t really use it.”

Adam slipped a bill under his glass on the counter and started walking for the exit, the man’s warm forearm in under his palm. “It’s fine,” he replied, “you kind of look like the type who’d sleep with fluffy blankets anyway.”

“I’ll just pretend you didn’t say that,” the man rolled his eyes, grinning, bumping Adam’s sleeved shoulder with his bare, muscled one. Adam huffed out a laugh and bumped him back.

 

The city was a vivid, over-saturated picture once they stepped out of the dark entryway of the club, voices high and hysteric as they laughed. The chill bit at Adam’s cheeks, and he knew instantly that his face was slowly reddening with the sudden change in temperature, from the almost oppressive humid club air to the chilly city night air.

The man’s shoulders tensed for a moment, then lowered, still tensed, but pretending not to be. Adam stared at the back of his leather jacket.

The man continued down to the edge of the sidewalk to hail a cab, letting Adam bask in the sound of the city around him and forget that that just happened. Adam didn’t mind.

In the five years he’s been in DC, he’s never had enough time to explore it for its best features. He’s been to a total of five locations, one of which was his old apartment building downtown, and another being the big library a few blocks from his work place.

He almost felt like regretting the past five years, because it’s been five years since he left his home town, five years since he’s had to work tooth and nail for financial stability, five years since he’s felt like he was nothing but the soil of the earth. Adam carefully pushed the feeling down, deeper into the rabbit hole it was supposed to be in.

A taxi pulled up ahead of them, and the now-jacketed stranger held the door for him. Adam would’ve been charmed, had he not been startled by the hand held out to him, as if Adam had needed a hand getting into a taxi cab that came up to his chest, as if Adam were Cinderella and this sharp stranger would be his escort for the night.

The magic only lasted until midnight, but with the look in those summer eyes, Adam felt like he had forever.

“The name’s Ronan, by the way,” the man said, his face shadowed by the yellow light of the cab’s sign. His lashes made a shadow across his cheekbones, his nose a perfect arch in the sign of European blood in his veins, his eyes tinting green in the harsh light. “Ronan Lynch. I thought you should know.”

Adam felt the world collapse beneath him as he observed this stranger— _Ronan_ , his brain supplied, pinning the name on everything that was in-focus and sharp _and—_

He felt years apart from what his original goal was, felt years apart from what was going to go down after this, and even more years apart from the events leading up to meeting this impossible human named Ronan Lynch.

The ground reunited with his feet when the cabbie punched the horn, telling them to speed it up. Adam jolted at the sound, grabbing at Ronan’s warm, soft hand out of reflex. Ronan gave the cabbie a quick glare, softening his gaze when he looked at Adam, then at Adam’s hand holding his.

Their grips tightened. Adam felt the warmth seep slowly up his hand, through his arm, heating up into a fire and eating at the oxygen that Adam needed.

“I’m Adam Parrish,” was all Adam could breathlessly say, before climbing into the car past Ronan, apologizing to the driver for the delay, and giving the address to his condominium.

Ronan slipped in beside him and made no comment about what had transpired. Adam felt like the world was zipping past his peripheral, felt like he was going to puke, felt like he—

A hand settled onto his knee, grounding him, settling him back into reality. Then, Ronan pulled him in by a soft, warm touch to the jaw. Adam hadn’t known to close his eyes when Ronan kissed him, but it seemed he did, because he had to open his eyes to see Ronan’s intense blue ones staring back at him, shrouded in a shadow of hunger and something more.

There was a moment between them as they took soft breaths, just staring into each other’s eyes.

Adam had studied astronomy back in Aglionby, and remembered that the stars with cooler colors burned the hottest, and he never really found it believable until this moment.

Adam took his turn, this time slowly; sliding the tip of his nose over the bridge of Ronan’s; feeling the brush of those dark lashes on his cheek; his breathing trickling out steadily as he slid his mouth over Ronan’s.

They slotted together like they were made for each other, and Adam refused to ponder on that, no, and he chose to ponder instead on the bump of the road that they felt through the newly upholstered back seats of the lowered vehicle; on the sound of the radio muffled by static, on the sounds the traffic around them and, most importantly, on the sound of Ronan’s breath mingling with his; the _slickness_ of their mouths, tongues, and lips; the soft clacking of their teeth as the car jolted them the wrong way.

Ronan made a small noise in the back of his throat and Adam swallowed it, and felt like he could, possibly, be sucked into the black hole that someone like Ronan would leave behind.

The night was just starting.


	2. the subject of your dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weird sensation from outside the club overtook Adam for a split second, and the Ronan next to him felt years away from the Ronan who thought that Adam would turn down someone like him.
> 
> This night was in momentum and Adam felt like it was going to burst on impact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is mostly just fucking

The key card to Adam’s condo wasn’t even in yet, and Ronan already had one of his fingers in one of Adam’s belt loops, near the front pocket.

To be fair, they could barely keep their hands off of each other in the back of that taxi.

Ronan tugged at him lightly.

“Can’t wait to get your hands on me, can you?” Adam murmured, glancing to the side to see Ronan’s smirk, so far from the charming, shy smile that he had not even a half-hour ago.

The weird sensation from outside the club overtook Adam for a split second, and the Ronan next to him felt years away from the Ronan who thought that Adam would turn down someone like him.

This night was in momentum and Adam felt like it was going to burst on impact.

Ronan stepped into his space—and there it was again, Adam noticed: Ronan’s complete dominance of everything, so much that he drew in even the space around him—just as the door opened, bringing his lips to where Adam’s jaw met his neck, and placed a kiss there.

They both stepped through the doorway, immediately a tangle of limbs and lips from one second to the other. His breath blew over Adam’s ear as he mumbled into it, “That makes two of us.”

Ronan’s voice had gone down deeper and deeper and _deeper_ , and it stirred something primordial in Adam, the exact thing he was aiming to open up in the beginning of that night. Accomplishment overruled, Adam felt like he had to prove something to someone like Ronan Lynch.

The finger looped by his belt loop nimbly skipped over to his zipper, where he was visibly straining but not enough to be painfully obvious. Adam took a sharp intake of breath at the slight contact, his hips twitching forward for more.

The door clicked shut behind them, as silent as the quickened breaths that came from Ronan, as Adam’s hand settled by his collarbone, thumb stroking gently, as he eagerly kissed his way down from Ronan’s lips.

Ronan’s soft hands slipped under his dress shirt, rubbing circles at his hipbones as he was pulled closer. Adam thrust forward, making a silent noise as his hips made contact, felt Ronan’s erection through their tight jeans. Adam lifted his head to catch Ronan’s lips again, biting down on the bottom of the other’s kiss-swollen lips.

There was a _thud_ as Adam pushed Ronan’s back against the door, a _thud_ as Ronan’s booted foot scuffed the door behind him in an attempt to get some leverage, a continuous _thud thud thudding_ that echoed through Adam’s ears as his blood rushed around, and around, and then south.

He thought that, maybe, Ronan heard it too.

His name sounded completely different when it was sighed against his own lips, against his neck, against the curve of his shoulder. “ _Adam_ ,” Ronan sighed and it sounded like gratification, like _finally_ or _touch me_ or like _fu_ —

Adam’s hands roamed over Ronan’s neck, over the raised skin of his tattoo, over his muscled shoulders and arms. He firmly ran the pads of his calloused fingers on the fabric over Ronan’s nipples, rolling his hips forward for some friction.

They were both grunting and groaning in the silent, otherwise empty room. Adam’s eyes fluttered shut, feeling unbearably warm from inside out, from where smooth palms grazed over his bare skin, from where teeth and tongue scraped by his collar bones.

Adam opened his eyes to see Ronan, whose eyes were lidded and dark and hungry, whose lips were swollen and parted, whose breath came quick with the heavy rise and fall of his chest.

Ronan’s fingers shook as he popped open the buttons of Adam’s dress shirt, his lips pressing kisses that went lower and lower with each button popped. Adam felt a shiver run through him again, as he took one step back, then another. Ronan straightened up, a bemused look on his face. His hands have retreated to Adam’s bare waist, but did not move a single muscle.

“Bedroom,” Adam stated, his voice sounding hoarse with lack of use and proper hydration. His mouth tasted like alcohol and what was uniquely just Ronan. He licked at his lips, raking his eyes over Ronan’s disheveled and dazed look. He reckoned he didn’t look any worse.

Adam hesitantly turned and walked into his bedroom, leaving Ronan at the exit by his living room. Briefly, he stood by the opening, contemplating the damage that would be done if he took the measures of having sex on his newly washed sheets.

A hand snaked its way out to his stomach. Adam turned around, laying a hand by Ronan’s wrist.

Ronan was less clothed, his free hand casually throwing his now-discarded black tank and leather jacket somewhere on Adam’s bedroom floor. He had to lean down to catch Adam’s lips, had to lean down to get a good grip on Adam’s ass.

The height advantage was a little overwhelming to think about.

“Make yourself at— _shit_ , mm, home, why don’t you?” Adam mumbled against Ronan’s lips, hissing as Ronan hummed and gave his ass a not-so weak slap. His hands roamed over Ronan’s now bare shoulders, fingers running over the raised skin of the tattoo that took over the other’s back. Ronan pressed his forehead to Adam’s shoulder, giving him free access to the whole tattoo.

Slowly, Ronan brought them over to the bed, careful not to jostle Adam as his fingers made their perilous journey through each flowing line on the picture of his back. Ronan sat himself down by the edge of the bed, watching Adam as the other knelt, knees on either side of Ronan’s thighs. Adam looked down at him, with his mouth hanging open, with a face that looked reverential and at awe.

Ronan’s skin was as soft as his hands, his lips, his smile, and Adam thought that it looked good in this light: shadowed by the city lights from the bedroom windows, but shining a brighter light than the life outside. The lines of the tattoo were as sharp as Ronan’s grin, as sharp as the colors made to look like watercolor on beige canvas, as sharp as Ronan’s blue eyes taking in all of Adam.

Adam settled onto Ronan’s lap, feeling Ronan underneath him, warm and present as the sun. Adam ground his hips downward, keeping his hand on Ronan’s shoulder to keep himself from being scorched under the attention.

Ronan heaved a sigh, mouth parted, brows drawn upward, eyes closed as his body shuddered underneath Adam. Adam let his eyes roam over the vast expanse of Ronan Lynch: his narrow hips trapped beneath Adam, wide shoulders hunched and shaking, smooth skin glistening with sweat, sharp brows drawn together.

Adam kept his pace, thrusting his hips slowly, his gaze traveling just as slow.

Ronan put a hand on his knee, the blue returning to his dark eyes, just a bit, as he looked up at Adam like he was the holiest thing he knew.

“Slow down,” Ronan murmured into his collarbone, his hand sliding up to Adam’s hip, to stop the gradual shift in speed that sped up their sighs and hearts. It was enough to make Adam’s head spin, how much he just wanted to savor every thrust, sigh, and groan that came out of him.

“We’ve got the whole night ahead of us,” Ronan said, which was true enough to make Adam settle.

Briefly, Adam considered how much strength that whole statement must have taken.

Ronan backed onto the mattress, the sheets conforming to his presence. Adam laughed at the little dance that the other had to do to slip out from under him.

He sat in the middle of the bed, and Adam saw the way that his hand shook as they tried to take off his belt. Adam scooted closer, hands at the ready.

“Here, I’ll help,” Adam said with a small grin and a smaller laugh, giving Ronan a peck on the shoulder. Ronan laughed, and it eased the tension on his face, a shift big enough to set Adam off. He wished he’d been observing closer to see how it happened.

There was something colossal to the sound of the belt buckle clinking by Adam’s hands that made him stop to look at Ronan. Their grins died down, and a fire started where their eyes met. One of his hands left the task in favor of running a hand through Ronan’s shaved head.

Ronan’s warm hands met his again, helping him with the button of his jeans. His eyes never strayed far from Adam’s face.

He kneeled, shoving off his jeans the best he could with Adam’s help. All Adam could think about was how good he looked in those tight black boxers, and how wet the front of it was.

Adam had no control over his hands, his senses, his brain. He just moved, and moved and never thought about it. Ronan gasped as Adam touched him, a touch that was barely there, light fingers by the tip caressing through the stretched out fabric of his boxers.

Adam traced his fingers up and down Ronan’s shaft, his eyes lidded as he watched Ronan’s reaction: the slack-jawed, shuddering breath that escaped his chest, the full-body shiver that came after. Adam would never tire of this.

“Stop teasing,” Ronan growled, his grip on Adam’s arm (he forgot it was there) tightening until his blunt nails dug into Adam’s skin, but the impact of his words died down as he made a soft-keening noise when Adam lightly traced his nails over the tent of Ronan’s boxers.

Adam grinned, and it felt like something else on his face. He palmed Ronan, kneeling to get on his level. He kissed Ronan and slyly whispered into a pierced ear, “I thought you wanted to slow down.”

Ronan arched towards Adam’s palm, uninhibited in his search for pleasure, and Adam didn’t take his eyes off of him.

“Show me how fast you want it,” Adam said, his voice sounding odd and demanding, pushing Ronan flat on his back. He slipped his fingers into the waistband and slowly started sliding the boxers off.

Adam watched Ronan’s thighs twitch as the garter slid over his dick on the way down. He watched Ronan prop himself up on his elbows. He watched Ronan raise his hips so that Adam could slide the garment all the way off.

Ronan was bare, and Adam felt more naked under that gaze even though he still wore his jeans. They could both swallow each other with their gazes until there was nothing left for others to see.

Wordlessly, Ronan reached out for Adam’s hand, and wordlessly, Adam gave it. Ronan brought their hands to his dick, and Adam got the message.

Adam wrapped his fingers around Ronan, reveling, instantly, in the heat of him, thick and leaking and solid in his palm, pulse beating. Ronan leaned forward, his legs wrapping around Adam, his forehead leaning on Adam’s shoulder, once again baring his tattoo to Adam.

His nose nuzzled the line of Adam’s collarbone, followed by his soft, quick breaths, then by his teeth. Adam shuddered, feeling himself strain against his jeans. Ronan dragged his teeth in response.

The kiss that came after was not compensation, but, in fact, a warning. Adam felt the tongue slick over his pulse, and then felt teeth over his pulse, and then pain. Pain that was bearable and unhinged and felt _so good_.

Adam prided it in himself not to shout out, but in exchange came a moan, the loudest he’d managed in the evening so far. Ronan was pleased about this, it seemed, so Adam tightened his grip and slowed down his strokes as Ronan licked up his shoulder.

He pushed Ronan off and onto his back, feeling the lingering ache by his pulse, knowing the warmth dripping down his chest was not sweat. He’d never seen his own blood in so long, and he’d never seen his blood being shed in this context. Ronan Lynch was a new height of life that Adam hadn’t known he was aiming for.

Adam felt the awakened primordial thing in his chest take over, growled and sped up his strokes. His eyes bore down Ronan; sweating, writhing thing, clutching his sheets like Adam jerking him off was the most heavenly thing that evening.

There was a shift, something subtle and obvious—Ronan’s knuckles white with his grip on the sheets, his feet scrambling around Adam in search something more, his moans becoming whines—and Adam had noticed it, knew what it was for what it was. His grip left their task almost abruptly, watching Ronan take a sharp intake of breath, watching Ronan get up from his position so fast, _too fast_ —

Ronan’s lips were bruising, welcome, warm, and Adam kneeled up from his position to tell Ronan that he was still in control of this situation, but Ronan was not listening, was not looking at his actions. Hands fumbled, frustrated, at his jeans, popping the button open, shoving the garment down with a hard tug.

Ronan got off the bed to tug the pants all the way off, throwing it off to the side with his own discarded jeans. Adam didn’t know who this Ronan was, didn’t know what this frustrated, electrifying Ronan had planned, but Adam didn’t expect him to kneel by the edge of the bed.

Warm breaths came over the tip of his dick, then soft licks on the leaking tip, and Adam felt his own hand reach up to his own hair, pulling at his scalp as he bit down his groans. Ronan’s lashes were dark and his hands were solid by Adam’s hips, his fingers pulling by the garter of Adam’s boxers.

Ronan’s mouth took more of him as the boxers slid down, slow, agonizing sucks that made Ronan’s cheeks hollow out, and his _tongue—_ “ _Fuck,_ Ronan,” Adam cried out, his hips hindered by nothing, his gaze as firm as Ronan’s hands as he looked down at him.

Made impatient by Adam’s cries, Ronan shoved the boxers all the way down and pushed Adam upwards on the bed, his mouth taking more care with the tip, his tongue swirling around the head, and Adam felt his throat dry up.

The fire in his gut grew into a forest fire, burning the remainder of Adam’s walls, and he knew that he was close, because Ronan was humming against him, the vibrations sending spasms to his core, and he was _so close_.

Unceremoniously, Ronan’s mouth, slick with Adam and spit, parted to let out soft breaths, left Adam’s dick and went up to swallow Adam’s whines and moans because he was _so close_. Ronan grinned against the kiss, and Adam realized why he did what he did.

“You little shit,” Adam hissed pulling Ronan’s head to his lips again, tasting himself as he bit down Ronan’s bottom lip and pulled. Ronan groaned and pushed down, their teeth clacking and their hips grazing against each other.

Adam jolted as time stopped, an image flashed in his head, so vivid that it made him gasp. Ronan sitting over him, his neck bare and his throat dry and sore with use; Adam below him, sweat pooling on his stomach, hilt deep within Ronan and _so close_.

Adam blinked, and the image was gone, and Ronan was not riding him: No, he was still bent over Adam with his eyes closed, and Adam didn’t know what just happened, but he pointed at his bedside table and said, “Go check the top drawer.”

* * *

 

Adam was up before his alarm clock rang, and he groaned because it was a Saturday and he didn’t have to be up before his alarm clock rang.

Arms were wrapped around him, and he didn’t know who it was while he was still stuck in a sleepy haze. In his college days, it was not unusual that Adam would look for someone to sleep with on a Friday evening. In his college days, his one night stands did not usually stay over and cuddle with him until Saturday morning.

Adam searched his mind for memories and remembered the club, the tattoo, the soft lips, and Adam remembered Ronan Lynch. With a flood of recognition and realization and relief, Adam sighed and shifted slightly to gain more warmth from the soft skin and strong arms around him.

“What time is it?” Ronan mumbled, apparently already up. His voice was hoarse, and they were both probably dehydrated from last night.

“Did I wake you?” Adam whispered, pushing to sit up. Ronan took his hand and brought it to his lips, eyes still closed. Adam looked at him doing this and saw that he didn’t really mind.

There was something to Ronan Lynch when he was glowing with the sunlight streaming through the windows, something that made Adam wish he could wake up to this every day, something that made Adam hope that last night wasn’t just a one-time thing if he was going to continue wishing.

“No, I was just too comfy to get up,” Ronan responded, his breath blowing over Adam’s knuckles, his lashes fluttering as he opened his eyes. Still the same summer-sky blue that reminded Adam too much and too little of his childhood town.

Adam got up; let the blankets fall off his skin in that way that always made him shiver. Ronan looked at him, at his body, at his face, his gaze uninhibited and face softly painted with want in the morning light. “I’m going to make coffee,” Adam said, snapping Ronan out of his reverie. Those eyes never left him.

“That’ll be fan-fucking-tastic, Parrish,” he replied roughly, aggressively sitting up and popping every crack in his back. His face formed a wince that made Adam laugh.

“I’ll set a bottle of water out while the pot’s whirring. There’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom,” Adam said, before picking up a pair of boxer shorts from the floor and Ronan’s tank on the way out of his bedroom, not bothering on hurrying on putting it on just yet.

“You’re an angel, really,” Ronan shouted from his room.

“Get moving,” Adam responded.

 

* * *

 

“So what do you do?” Ronan asked, staring at the framed diplomas and swimming trophies by his shelves. He was wearing a ratty Beatles shirt that he probably snatched from Adam’s drawers, and his own pair of boxer shorts.

Adam looked at the display, wiping the milk from his mouth and swallowed before saying, “I’m a lawyer. The swimming was mandatory back in high school, it just so happens that I was good at it.”

Ronan looked at him, and _really_ looked at him. There was something in his eyes that looked like satisfaction and pride, and Adam realized that Ronan was checking him out. He couldn’t resist the grin on his face, so he hid it behind his hand.

“I’m actually a vet,” Ronan said, grabbing the bag of cereals from beside Adam’s bowl and pouring some into his mouth. Adam blinked, not expecting that someone with Ronan’s apparel would be a veterinarian. He imagined Ronan inside a facility, helping animals and pet-owners.

Ronan Lynch did not look like a dog-or-cat person. He looked like he probably owned a carrion bird. No, Adam thought, he looked like a carrion bird himself.

Adam stared at him and at his soft hands and understood, then remembered Ronan’s thighs and stared at those too. “No high school sports?” he asked.

Ronan noticed Adam’s staring, and Adam noticed him noticing, but he wasn’t ashamed of that. Ronan’s mouth formed a grin that was between smug and shy, and Adam found himself not hiding his grin anymore.

“I used to play tennis.”

Adam hummed in approval, “Lots of crouching.”

Ronan laughed, one solid _ha!_ that made Adam chuckle a little. “Yeah, lots of fucking crouching and grunting,” he said and they both laughed at that, and Adam found this path he took—one that showed him days that began with Ronan’s arms around him—beginning to stretch out in front of him.

A phone rang in the other room, and Ronan said, “Shit,” before making a run for it.

“’Sup, dick,” Ronan said into his own phone as he walked back into the kitchen-dining room set up. His voice remained dismissive as he said, “Yeah, I picked up, right? I’m still fucking alive.”

Adam couldn’t possibly imagine who was at the other end of the line, so he just kept eating his cereal.

“I had plans of my own last night, thank you ver—That’s none of your fucking business, Gansey,” Ronan protested, suddenly red. Adam thought maybe this Gansey just realized that Ronan was out with someone last night and had proceeded to tell Ronan so. Then, he thought that Ronan looked pretty damn cute when he was blushing.

“Yeah, I’ll be there at five. Yeah. _Alright_ , already, Jesus H. Christ. And keep Noah out of my fucking closet. If he touches that, tell him to piss up a fucking rope. Bye.”

Ronan groaned and dropped the phone on Adam’s kitchen counter.  “That was my housemate.”

“Cool of them to call so early in the morning,” Adam commented. “They were checking up on you?”

Ronan huffed, “Wished he wouldn’t. We’ve been friends and roommates since high school. Where’s the trust?”

Adam laughed at that, “I think you’re not the type to be trusted with alcohol in the late evening.”

“Well aren’t you a fucking psychic. Why don’t you read my cards next,” Ronan muttered sarcastically. Adam huffed and stood to give him a peck on the nose.

“What the—oh, _oh_ Parrish, that’s fucking slick,” Ronan laughed, watching as Adam sunk back into his seat and unlocked Ronan’s phone.

“I am pretty smart, thank you very much,” Adam retorted, entering his number on Ronan’s phone.

Just as he added his contact on the list, a finger came up to his chin, and Adam was met with soft lips, and he found himself missing it even though it was given to him at that moment.

“Good morning to you too,” Adam muttered against Ronan’s lips.

“I have a thing at five, mind being my plus one?” Ronan asked.

Adam blinked and looked at Ronan in his ratty Beatles shirt, his tattoo peaking out from the collar, his summer-sky eyes that made Adam’s breath rush out of his lungs every time. He blinked and looked at Ronan and said, “If I say yes, are you going to leave and pick me up until then?”

Ronan kissed him again, arms wrapping around his waist, pushing his back against the fridge. Adam kissed back, tongue flicking out to lick at Ronan’s still bruised lips, swallowing the slow sighs that came from Ronan, and letting out slow sighs of his own.

The sleeve of Ronan’s tank top was sliding off of his shoulder.

Ronan’s eyes took him in, in a way that made Adam feel like last night was years ago and made him feel like last night was merely seconds ago, and Adam could feel himself harden in his boxers from under that gaze.

Without speaking, Adam knew that Ronan wouldn’t have been able to leave that apartment yet. They both were not ready to let this thing end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be updating (just to make it clear now) _after_ every three days. I kind of maybe didn't expect the fourth chapter to take so long whilst writing.
> 
> Comments are appreciated! My tumblr is [here](http://stubbornjerk.tumblr.com).


	3. doesn't look a thing like Jesus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan was never going to forget.

**RONAN**

_We’re alike, you and I._

Ronan couldn’t think of words to express how wrong that was, but he was barely articulate most of the time, except when he was pushing people away, so that wasn’t of much help.

Ronan wanted to scream.

Bony fingers swept over his arm, blunt nails scraping white lines on his pale skin. These hands knew nothing, and Ronan hated them, but his body disagreed.

He hated it. His stomach churned, but the smoke in his lungs was dulling it.

Ronan wanted to let go.

The windows of the vehicle became misted, the temperature outside the car not agreeing with the interior. The heat was making it feel like his stomach was going to upturn and crush his lungs. The urge to open the door and run into the cold was overwhelming.

One notch below this current temperature would send him screaming his guts out.

Ronan wanted to be nothing like him, wanted to push him away, and being like him would be to stay in this car and to let him do whatever he wanted with Ronan.

Pushing people away was what Ronan did best, so he let the door press in on his back, copped for the door handle in the dark, and pulled.

* * *

“You own an old-ass BMW M3,” came Adam’s amused statement as they walked up to said old-ass BMW M3. Ronan happened to park it near Adam’s building the previous night, knowing that if he hadn’t have picked up anyone, he would’ve had to sober up before driving.

Minding the gap from the sidewalk to the road, Ronan went around the car, to the driver’s side door. Without thought, he skimmed a hand over the hood, resisting a wince as he felt the temperature sting the tip of his fingers.

“It runs like a dream,” he said, which was true. Ronan remembered so much of his time spent inside the BMW: trying to rein in the beast with rubber tires whilst trying to rein his own beasts, getting in when he was having one of those _nights_ and driving to soothe his mind. His BMW, which had belonged to his late father, worked like a dream, like a nightmare, like something he couldn’t have in and from himself: a haven, an escape, reliability.

Adam inclined his head to the side in a curious, birdlike way that revealed a bit of the marks on his neck from the previous night. Ronan shoved away the weight that dropped from his throat to his stomach at the sight.

He must have made a face anyway, because Adam’s eyes, cold and blue as winter, met his own over the hood of the car. The look in his eyes was glazed over, with an amount alarming concern that Ronan wasn’t used to.

“Hey there, gorgeous. Need a ride?” Ronan quipped with a smirk, because it was easier than spluttering around in his head like his best friend’s hell-colored Camaro; because it was easier than braving the curiosity and _something else_ in Adam’s eyes. Adam raised an elegant brow at this.

“Get the fuck in already,” Ronan said in a voice that was mockingly impatient and impossibly adoring that he almost wanted to retrace his steps through life and resort to punching something just to not grin like an idiot at the smile that his statement brought to Adam’s face.

The next fifteen minutes were spent with Adam spluttering about with his stereo (a CD with the infamous internet hit The Murder Squash song on repeat was what greeted him upon the car’s ignition) and Ronan laughing his ass off.

“I can’t believe you listen to that bullshit,” Adam said, eyes wide with laughter, mouth set in fake seriousness. Ronan tried to keep his eyes on the road, tried to stop waiting for Adam to laugh, tried to stop grinning.

 “Oh come on, that’s blasphemy,” Ronan retorted, but his lips were still upturned and it made his voice sound odd and light.

Adam rolled his eyes and turned on the radio instead.

There was some static, before Adam switched channels, “ _…to you by up and coming indie artist, Samuel Beck, requested by @jersey_trash on our Twitter page. And a very big shout-out to Mr. Beck and Cole St. Clair’s album coming out tomorrow, because we’ll definitely be waiting for that. So, Darryl, how’s DC been treating you? For those of you just listening, we have here with us Mr. Alle…_ ” Adam turned down the volume.

Ronan tried to suppress the shaking of his fingers, tried to resist the urge to turn up the heating in the car. He knew that Adam was observing and he knew that he was more than willing to let those blue eyes observe him. But none of that made it any less unnerving. Their silences were not uncomfortable though, which Ronan was grateful for, because he was more than willing to let the silence hang between them. Their silences were little pocketed spaces of safety that reminded Ronan of the blanketed desk chair in his father’s office back home.

“… _A fan from our FB page just posted ‘I keep hearing rumors about wild animals in the streets. Recent gossip says something about finding a wolf’. A_ wolf _? Now I’ve heard of badgers, rats, and street cats, dear… Tyler Jones, but wolves in our dumpster-ridden alleys? No, no, no_.”

Ronan felt the weight in his stomach from earlier drop down with such force that he was sure that Adam had caught onto the sudden rush of air that was pushed out of his lungs.

_Oh no._

* * *

Ronan knew what he looked like when he and Adam walked into the diner.  Pale and ghastly, the radio talk had his head reeling with a thousand thoughts of disappointment, anxiety, and _He’s here._ Ronan felt like the world was a vehicle driving into an impending car crash.

_He’s here_.

His eyes swept along the vicinity. The gang was in their usual corner of the pizzeria Gansey had grown attached to. Ronan felt Adam’s grip tighten in his, when they started moving towards the group, and Ronan squeezed back in comfort. It seemed that Adam had noticed that Ronan needed some comfort too, so he brought Ronan’s knuckles to his lips, then his lips to Ronan’s. When they pulled away, everything was fine.

It was almost overwhelming, how fast this was going, how fast they reacted to each other’s emotions after just one night. Had he been a casual dater, he would have been right to think that. But Ronan wasn’t a casual dater, and so far, Adam didn’t seem to mind.

As they walked up, Gansey looked up from his notes, glasses askew on his face, pen ink smudged against his left cheek— he took one look at Ronan’s hand in Adam’s, took one look at the paleness to Ronan’s pallor— and gave his best politician’s smile.  The group shifted around to meet its casual placing. _We’ll talk about it later_ , the smile meant. _Let’s deal with pleasantries first_ , it added.

Noah turned to look at them—his platinum blond hair haloed with orange from the lights over their table— his gaze finding Ronan, then Adam, then them holding hands. The delighted cackle that came from him startled a grin from Ronan.

Blue looked up from where she was looking at Gansey’s notes at the sound of cackling, the bendy straw that was hanging from her lips dropping as she let out an obnoxious hoot that made Ronan’s grin grow wider and a little bit bashful, though he wouldn’t care to admit that latter part.

“Introductions, details,” chirped Noah, knees digging into the upholstery of the cheap diner seats as he greeted Ronan while kneeling in his seat. He looked at Adam, with his mischievous brace-ridden smile and said, “I expect my friend was civil last night. Did he cry?”

Ronan grinned, sharp and familiar, “Fuck off, Noah.”

“He was very civil,” replied Adam, acting like he didn’t hear Ronan’s attempts at pushing the issue aside. He was grinning too, and Ronan felt himself relax.

“Fortunately, he didn’t cry,” Adam added with a laugh, raising a brow at a steadily reddening Ronan.

Blue laughed, “Heaven forbid Ronan Lynch would cry over something like—”

“Everyone, please. Manners,” Gansey, God bless his soul, interjected. Ronan stepped forward, nudging Noah to move over, sitting down between him and Adam.

“My name’s Noah,” Noah said over Ronan’s head. He was still kneeling. Ronan not-so lightly elbowed at his hip. Noah not-so lightly kneaded his elbow on Ronan’s head. Adam reached out to shake his hand and ignored their struggling.

“Is it cold in here?” asked Adam as he withdrew his hand from Noah’s. Ronan was relieved that he didn’t just ask Noah why his hands were cold.

Blue shook her head, knocking a few strands loose from her hairclips, “Noah’s just part ice cube.”

“Am not,” Noah protested with a whine.

“Are too,” Ronan argued, more out of reflex than to make a point.

The running joke between Blue and Ronan was this: Noah Czerny was born with pale skin that blended easily with the temperature of the air around him. The problem wasn’t that Noah was always one with the room temperature; it was that he had trouble absorbing heat once he’s reached the coldest the room could go. Blue and Ronan have been going back and forth on what the real theory was, and so far, they’ve settled with Noah being a fusion of something. The key was to keep it to things that weren’t awesome in Noah’s opinion.

“Maybe he’s part ghost,” Adam quipped, his fingers running over Ronan’s knuckles under the table, in a way that made Ronan forget what he was going to say next.

Noah smiled, braces glinting as he pointed at Adam but looked at Blue, “I like him already.”

Blue rolled her eyes affectionately and turned her attention to Adam, “I’m Blue, and this nerd beside me is Gansey.”

Gansey had been silent the whole time, and Ronan felt like he’d seen more than Ronan let him see earlier. Ronan bristled a little at the thought. They’ve known each other for so long, six whole years of companionship, and Ronan still got overwhelmed by their closeness.

“Jane, I’m not a n—“

“What was that? Couldn’t hear you ever the amount of notes you have for something you’ll use for just _one scene_.”

Gansey sighed and brought his attention back towards Adam. His shoulders were wound up too tight to look convincingly casual, but no one seemed to notice but Ronan. Gansey’s brows furrowed and his face showed an expression of something akin to apology, “I really do apologize for this. They’re not normally _this_ obnoxious.”

“We _are_ this obnoxious around anyone that Ronan brings home though,” Noah interjected.

“I don’t mind,” Adam responded, ignoring Noah’s attempts at interjecting. Gansey gave a relieved sigh.

Ronan laughed, looking towards a mockingly dejected Noah, “I didn’t know we lived in this diner.”  Blue and Noah attempted the valiant effort of kicking at his knee under the table and succeeded. Ronan was sure there would be a bruise there the next morning, but he didn’t mind.

“I’m Dick Gansey, but please, just call me Gansey,” Gansey introduced himself. He gestured around the table, at the three trays of pizza, one of which were crust-less and missing a few pieces. “Help yourself.”

Adam shook his head, the smile on his lips looking odd and out of place. “Oh, no, I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Adam. Adam Parrish. I _really_ don’t mind, I’m—uh…”

Ronan grunted, pulling at Adam’s hand. Adam looked to him, brows furrowed with something that Ronan couldn’t determine.

“These things are going to rot in our fridge if you don’t help us eat it,” Ronan reasoned out, voice rising an octave above his normal speaking voice. He was not used to reasoning things out. “Look at the anchovies one, it’s fucking _crust-less_.”

“Ah, second fuck of the night,” Blue commented softly.

“Yes, seems so. If he’s been this civilized all day, I would bet that it’s been a minimum of ten, today,” Noah added.

This was another running joke: Blue and Noah’s gaming commentary on Ronan’s daily amount of profanity.

“Actually,” Adam spoke up, having heard the whole exchange under Ronan’s gaze, a mischievous look on his face as he glanced at Ronan. Ronan felt his face flush with realization.

To avoid the dilemma of humiliation, Ronan grabbed at a piece of the cheese pizza, which was tray nearest to his seat, and shoved it at Adam’s open mouth. Blue had the gall to coo at this action, and Adam was trying not to laugh while chewing.

Gansey sighed, exasperated and affectionate, and Ronan felt something like contentment roll in his stomach, let it stay there for as long as it could.

 

* * *

The city lights around them bent and twirled around the hood of his BMW, it was almost mystical, like a sentient piece of the void swimming through the visual noise of the city.

Ronan glanced at the passenger seat and smiled to himself.

It was strange, the strangest thing Ronan ever knew. For the longest time, he’d avoided the cold in fear of the monster inside him, but he found the piece of the chill that was comforting, like misty mornings or a breeze over a pond at dusk. Adam Parrish was a wonderfully dangerous piece of cold that Ronan wanted, though he was required to keep himself warm.

“I had a great time,” Adam said when his building was within sight.

They rolled up to the front, but Ronan didn’t feel like letting him out just yet. Adam had said that he had work tomorrow and Ronan had promised that he was only here to give Adam a lift back home, so he was going to have to anyway.

“Yeah?” Ronan asked, glancing to see the side of Adam’s face, shadowed against the lights outside. Ronan brought his eyes back to the road.

Adam made a sound of approval. “Learned a lot from Noah,” he quipped.

“Yeah, one of these days, he’s gonna get what’s coming to him,” Ronan said, but it was an empty threat. Ronan hoped Adam knew that.

There was a grin in Adam’s voice, one that made Ronan grin too, when he said, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a choir boy, really.”

“Gonna take a lot for you to make me sing, Parrish,” Ronan retorted, shifting the gears to park.

“Yeah?” Adam’s voice had gone lower, his tone going into familiar territory.

Ronan made a sound of approval.

Adam shifted in his seat, unbuckling his seatbelt. Leaning over the stick shift, he grabbed at Ronan’s leather jacket, pulling him closer.

“I’ve made you sing more times than you think, Lynch,” Adam muttered, his grin mischievous and teasing in Ronan’s ear. Ronan’s heart roared loudly into his ears, so loud that he was afraid that Adam might hear it.

Wrapped around the dim lights coming from the tinted windows, Adam looked formidable and dominating, nothing at all like the boy Ronan held hands with at the diner.

Ronan pulled him down by the neck, his tongue darting out to lick Adam’s chapped lips, gasping as Adam’s cold fingers touched his jaw.

“I thought,” Ronan muttered between the kisses, “you had work tomorrow.”

Adam hummed, and pulled away, crawling over to Ronan’s seat and straddling him. He was trapped between the sweat on the back of his shirt and Adam’s cold fingers. “So I do.”

“This an open invite, then?” Ronan asked, running his fingers over Adam’s collarbones, remembering all too well that Adam was still wearing his tank top.

“You have my number, Lynch,” Adam reminded him. With one last peck, he wrenched open the driver side door and stepped out of the vehicle.

Ronan sat back in his seat, the back of his head hitting the headrest as he let out a sigh. He let himself down, counting backwards from ten, ignoring the strain in his jeans.

There was a knock on the passenger side window, and Ronan looked up to see who it was. He rolled it down, and saw Adam lean in, and it was honestly like one of those rom-coms that Ronan almost laughed.

“I’ll see you Tuesday. Maybe I’ll return your tank top,” he said with a grin, pulling his sweater by the hem to reveal that he was wearing Ronan’s tank top underneath it.

Ronan laughed at that, “No guarantee, huh? Alright then.”

Adam leaned back out, grinned, and waved at him. Ronan waved back, then rolled the window back up and drove away with a smile on his face.

 

* * *

Gansey didn’t sleep in the living room anymore, but that didn’t mean that Ronan didn’t find him waiting there when he got back home.

The living room was cluttered with fabrics from Blue’s projects, and various snow globes that Noah collected over the years. There were books stacked in the corner, and the sofa set was arranged in a way that was ready for a blanket fort every waking hour. Gansey was sitting on the ottoman beside the set, with his back to the entrance, his knees pressed up to his chin, and his ears not preoccupied by music for once.

He looked so small, in that position, but he practically dominated every square inch of the empty space around him.

“Ronan, we still have to talk about this afternoon,” Gansey said— he didn’t need to look to know, because they all knew who was who, inside this warehouse —in a voice that held no room for excuse. He was the only person that Ronan didn’t defy on occasions that required him to be serious. So, Ronan stayed by the door, immobile with anxiety and silent with the loss of words.

“You have news, don’t you,” it was a statement, not a question. Because Ronan was the master of loopholes, and asking Ronan a question you could answer for yourself was synonymous to asking for a cold shoulder.

“They sighted a wolf in the streets,” Ronan found himself saying, but he didn’t remember the words coming out of his mouth. He was _this_ close to shifting, but the temperature wasn’t going to set him off. There were three heaters in the living room, and they made Ronan feel like this was a set up.

“They?” asked Gansey, opening his eyes, the hazel color lost to the darkness.

“I heard it on the radio,” Ronan found himself saying once more.

There was a moment of silence that was held for contemplation, because this was a huge thing. It was one thing to see _him_ with his own eyes, and another thing altogether for the media to get to him first.

“And that’s all?”

Ronan frowned, “All there is, at the moment.”

The silence that followed after was dismissive. Gansey didn’t turn to look at him.

Ronan didn’t look at him either, to make sure he wasn’t going to say anything else. He strode past the ottoman without another word, heading to his room. Before he closed the door, he heard Gansey say, “We’ll find him before he finds you, Ronan.”

Ronan already knew that well enough, but there was doubt in his core.

* * *

The car door opened. He fell backwards, his elbows scraping at the asphalt beneath him, but his bones were already cracking and reforming, his skin ripping open and simmering. He had no elbows, only haunches. He had no skin, only fur.

His thoughts dissolved with the smoke floating out of the vehicle.

His claws scraped the floor, his nose picking up the smell of burnt leaves, the smell of winter, the smell of prey in the distance. This close to nature while being in a place built for humans made him angry and restless. He growled and sprinted, but hesitated for a moment when he heard a voice call out, “You won’t be able to forget me, Lynch.”

The language was lost to him; he didn’t know what the voice had said. The tone was not drowned out with incomprehension, because it was too near for him to tune it out in favor of prey. A nuisance was what it was. He snarled.

He turned his nose towards the scent of prey, prowled towards the tree line, effectively ignoring the voice.

He wasn’t able to make it to the tree line before his bones shattered again—again? When had it broken the first time? It made him pause and take the moment to howl in pain.

He needed to get out of here.

The voice called out again, “You can push it away, but you won’t forget me.”

He reeled in, his pulse pushing out and pulling in. His spine cracked and rearranged itself, and then he remembered again. He had skin again, he had elbows again, he had opposable thumbs.

He was naked.

_He’s right_ , Ronan thought as he shivered, naked in the cold Virginian air, with the vehicle emitting harmful fumes behind him. _He’s right._ What was he thinking?

He was never going to forget.

Joseph Kavinsky was probably the last person he’d forget.


	4. give me a mention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he shouldn’t have gone home early after all.

The warehouse—since it was not the 1136 Monmouth of Henrietta, Virginia—was not named anything.

It was not the dreamer’s laboratory that was Monmouth, with Gansey’s bed placed barren in the middle of the living room that also served as his bedroom, with the empty first floor that was full of dust and sand and _more_ dust, with the parking lot littered with tire marks from sleepless nights that were remedied with driving donuts onto the asphalt.

The warehouse was more domestic than 1136 Monmouth, in the way that the bathroom and kitchen were not joint but adjoined, in the way that there was functional heating and functional air-conditioning throughout the warehouse, in the way that the first floor was vacated by things that Noah collected and sold.

It was unusual for this place to be purposefully silent, because four people in one living space—being _alive_ in one living space—made it difficult for silence to be a constant.

In the current state it was in, Gansey was inside his and Blue’s room, sitting by his desk, punching in fact and fiction into his laptop; Blue was out, currently at the bookstore she worked at, or at the arts and crafts stores she worked at—only Gansey seemed to know her schedule down to the letter—earning the kind of money for rent that the rest of her housemates did not need to; Noah was out to various junkyards and junkshops, earning money in his own way; Ronan was at the clinic downtown.

Everyone but Gansey was out for the day. Music played in the living room, and Gansey was sure that any time now, Blue or Noah would be home, because it was half-past four, and none of their shifts lasted until 8. It meant that he might have to cook dinner soon.

Oh, and another thing:

The warehouse was different to 1136 Monmouth in many different ways. It was, however, similar in one feature:

The front door’s knob rattled, and then stopped abruptly. There was a moment of silence in between, where it seemed that whoever was at the door saw that they were not going to get in. Then, the door leaned in and upward, then squeaked open.

* * *

 

**RONAN**

He took his fingers out of the dog’s mouth, patting her head for her patience. He looked at his assistant oddly, because it was odd that anyone that wasn’t a client would ever call his office. The gang usually called from his phone anyway.

“What did they say?” he asked anyway, going back to checking the dog’s vitals. Surely, if they didn’t wait for Ronan to pick up phone, it wouldn’t be that important.

“A Mr. Czerny says that you shouldn’t go home early today. Says that you would understand,” his assistant said, and she seemed confused. Ronan was just as confused as her.

“What day is it today?” he asked instead, because he never really looked at a calendar much these days, and there was a big chance that there was some event that slipped his mind.

“Monday, sir, why?” she replied.

Ronan hummed noncommittally, but didn’t give his assistant anything else. He wouldn’t have to see Adam until tomorrow afternoon, so it wouldn’t have been that. Did Gansey mention anyone coming over? Ronan didn’t recall him saying anything. Was Blue having an occasion? Was Noah?

Ronan didn’t recall anyone having an event happening. He didn’t have any plans either so it was definitely not that.

The poodle gave his hand a nudge, making him realize that he hasn’t’ been moving in the past couple of minutes. Dogs definitely could not tell the time, but Ronan was embarrassed either way. He set back to work.

Maybe he could ask when he got home.

 

* * *

The warehouse has never been this silent, and Ronan supposed that should have been enough to set him off. The last time the warehouse was this silent was when Ronan was still unemployed, when the internet connection was still shitty, and Blue still didn’t have her Bluetooth speakers.

Ronan stepped out of his car and scratched at the bit of stubble that was left behind this morning. What if they all headed out and his assistant misinformed him? Maybe they were having dinner somewhere, figuring that Ronan could use some time alone.

With Gansey being Gansey, that would have been impossible.

Maybe that should have definitely set him off. Maybe he should have stayed behind at the clinic today.

But with his clothes smelling like a shelter, and his eyelids warm and heavy, and his bones aching with fatigue, Ronan wanted nothing to do but to get inside the warehouse, take a shower, and sleep until he could see Adam again.

So he decidedly trudged up the steps that led to the living area, every metal step sounding hollower and hollower as he ascended, and the creaking steps sounding more and more foreboding. He reached the top of the stairs and stopped short.

Maybe he shouldn’t have gone home early after all.

The door was cracked open, enough to let in a little bit of the chilly air outside. That wasn’t what set Ronan off.

He opened the door, noticing the scratch at the door jamb, noticing the state of disarray at a more chaotic value. Books were scattered along the living room floor, Blue’s fabric scraps torn into smaller scraps, Noah’s snow globes rolling around the floor. The sofa was flat on its back.

Ronan took in the whole room, and it was getting to him slowly. Something was deeply, deeply wrong, and he most definitely should not have gone home early.

“Noah?” he called out. “Sargent? Gansey? Anyone home?”

Nothing. Nothing but echoes. Ronan remembered the last time that this was probably his worst nightmare, so he pinched himself just to prove that he was awake.

The floorboards kept solid under his feet, and the pinch sent a jolt right up his arm, and he sighed.

He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and shut the door behind him. There were three missed calls, two from Blue, and one from Noah. Swiping aside the notifications, he froze.

There was a text from Gansey that said: ‘ _if you went home early anyway, we found k and we’re attempting to capture him.stay at adam’s tonight if you have to.we’ll explain everything when we get back.stay safe,ro_ ’

Ronan took a shuddering breath and sighed. With the empty, chaotic space around him, it seemed like the whole warehouse had sighed with him. In this state, he could hear a needle drop, and it was making him paranoid.

He couldn’t be left alone.

Without a second thought, Ronan opened his contact list, scrolling down the total of six familiar contacts in his phonebook and stopped at the one that said ‘ _show me some love, tennis boy_ ’.

Ronan didn’t quite smile when he pressed call, but his face remembered the feeling of it.

 

* * *

Apologies were never Ronan’s forte. There was a time back when Gansey and the rest had stayed over in a ski lodge in Minnesota, where Ronan had a very terrible incident with the recreation room’s pool table whilst intoxicated. It was during autumn, he remembered, because he was still anxiously waiting to shift, because he was anxiously waiting for those stupid sneakers to ruin the interior of his temporary bedroom, because Blue and Noah were not in the lodge with him.

Gansey had given him a stern look over the pool table, which may have worked on him while he was drunk. He couldn’t remember the details, but he remembered the incident and the thing he’d told Gansey.

“It’s called pool, the fuck did you expect?” he’d asked Gansey, a statement of which produced a multitude of different reactions, varying from groans to laughter.

Apologies were still a continuing struggle in Ronan Lynch’s everyday life. Whether it was the fact that he’d left Blue’s pink sock in the load that had Gansey’s khakis, or the fact that he drained the fridge of orange juice for the fifth time that week. He would get Gansey new shorts, or he would buy them all orange juice for a month, but he would never apologize.

Apologies were hard to hear from Ronan, and this Monday afternoon was no different.

There was, however, a minor altercation to this bad habit of his. A disruption shown in the form of a case of breaking-and-entering by someone that Ronan Lynch didn't want to be associated with or responsible for. Joseph Kavinsky was a disease of the mind that ate away at Ronan's mortal coil worse than the monster in his gut did.

Adam Parrish had opened the door to his condo unit that afternoon, let him in with a smile, and offered him the bed.

His voice was charged with apologies that would never come out even if his life depended on it. “I can take the couch,” Ronan mumbled as he slipped into his pajama pants.

Adam was pretty smart, smart enough to know that he was both pretty _and_ smart. Ronan had expected that he would know when Ronan was offering an apology and when he wasn’t.

“Don’t be ridiculous, we can share the bed,” Adam replied, walking out of the kitchen area with two plates of Chinese takeout on one arm—a skill he may have acquired through experience—and eating utensils in his free hand.

Ronan moved out of the way as Adam set it all down on the table, clearing away his discarded clothes and shoving them into his bags.

In response, Ronan didn’t say, “That was because we were fucking,” like he should have, because he just intruded into Adam’s relaxing Monday afternoon, with nothing but the clothes on his back, a bag of toiletries and sleeping clothes, and his old-ass BMW parked near the building; with not even a decent half-true excuse that could explain his impromptu stay. Instead, Ronan took one of the plates, sat down and said, “I know we have, I’m just saying I can take the goddamn couch.”

Adam laughed, delightful and warm—nothing like the unexpected laugh that was wrenched out of him the night that they met but better—handing him utensils and turning on the TV. The lift it did to Ronan’s mood was minimal but present. Ronan scooted a little bit closer to the warmth he provided.

Adam paid no mind to Ronan's gradual shift towards him. With a small smile on his face, he reached for his own plate, settled into his seat next to Ronan and said, “I know you _can_ , Lynch, but we’re sharing the bed and that’s that. My house, my rules.”

It was said in a voice that left no room for argument; a voice that said _I don't really care_ ; a voice that Ronan didn't ask for but was grateful for.  Ronan put his feet up on the couch, pushing his cold toes onto the underside of Adam’s bare knees. He mumbled as he chewed, saying, “Stupid fucking rules, if you ask me.”

Adam heard it, settling his feet down onto the carpet below, effectively trapping Ronan’s cold toes. “I wasn’t asking you. Now eat your dinner,” he replied.

Ronan ate his dinner, pointedly wiggling his toes every other minute so that his feet wouldn’t fall asleep.

In the middle of commercial break, Adam scoffed, rolling his eyes to look at Ronan. It had a bit of a comical effect to it, how it was timed with the sounds of commercial break. All Ronan did was meet his eyes and continue to chew his food.

“Why are you being so adamant this?” he asked, sliding closer to Ronan.

Ronan huffed, “Wrong. I’m not _adam_ ant, you are.”

It took a moment before Adam laughed, “Yeah, okay. I walked into that one, didn’t I? But that’s beside the point.”

Ronan knew perfectly well that it was beside the point, and Ronan knew perfectly well that he shouldn’t even worry about it. If anything, Ronan knew that he was being difficult about this, that he could just take the bed with Adam and shut up about it. But Ronan was here because his ex-boyfriend just broke into his new shared living space while he was out working; Ronan was here because his friends were out looking for aforementioned ex-boyfriend so that he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else; Ronan was here because—

“Fine,” Ronan said.

Adam looked at him, setting his dinner down by his lap. There was a smile on his face that made Ronan think about the summers when Gansey drove with the windows down. The shadow in his mind receded with the brightness in Adam’s tone, the one that uttered, “Really? You sure?”

Ronan nodded.

 

* * *

Blue groaned as she pressed the cold compress to her forehead, stretching her booted foot over to the center table. Noah pressed himself over to the other corner of the couch, making way for Gansey, who was currently nursing both a headache and a black-eye.

There was a distinct lack of clattering that was a bit disappointing since their tea set had been plastic. Wordlessly, iced tea was poured into four cups, and set around the mess of feet and shoes on the table.

Ronan sat down the ottoman, which he had set down by the TV. He left the warehouse as he’d found it yesterday, too tired to even clean up around the sides, maybe gather around the book pile. That was normally Noah’s job.

“Man,” he started, surveying the damage done to both his friends and their living room. He noticed a huge tear running down Noah’s jeans and gave a low whistle, to make way for that heavy thing that just slid into his stomach. “He sure fucked you guys up real good.”

Noah made a sound that almost sounded like a laugh, the crack in his voice making it sound hysterical. His words were muffled into the couch cushions, but he said something like, “You should go see the other guy.”

Blue scoffed from the other end of the couch, her head lolling to the side, “Saying doesn’t work that way, Noah.”

Noah flipped her off.

Ronan snorted, “She doesn’t see your finger, Noah.”

Noah flipped him off.

Gansey groaned, sliding further down his seat. From this vantage point, he looked defeated and tired. Gansey seldom was. “He totally fucked us all up, I’m willing to admit that much,” he muttered.

Blue sat up abruptly, making Gansey wince, and Noah squish himself further into the couch. Ronan looked at her as if she was a crazed chipmunk.

“Did I just hear Dick Gansey the Third curse and say ‘totally’ in the same fucking statement, or did Kavinsky just make me hit my head too hard?” she asked, making Ronan laugh a little, and Noah laugh a lot.

“Jane, please,” Gansey said, and he actually sounded pained. Maybe it was because Blue had noticed the slip-up, or maybe it was because Blue had called him _Dick Gansey the Third_. Ronan didn’t care enough to differentiate.

“We still have to tell Ronan the whole story, you know,” Noah said from his side, sounding unwilling to have to tell it himself.

“Pass,” Gansey spoke up, which was a testament to how tired he was, since Gansey was a storyteller at heart. Silence wrapped around his one-sentence reply, making the tiredness seep into Ronan’s shoulders temporarily.

They were chasing Kavinsky for him. The house got broken into because Kavinsky was looking for him.

Kavinsky was looking for him.

“You don’t have to,” Ronan grumbled, standing up from the ottoman. Blue peaked from under her cold compress, brown eyes piercing Ronan as he walked past the couch. It was reminiscent to Gansey talking him out, the other night, but their silence was not dismissive. If anything, it was defeated, tired, and drained of any of the usual life that his friends had.

Ronan had enough stubbornness to force the silence into a state of being dismissive.

“We will anyway, Lynch. You know that,” she said after him, which meant that they would, because she was Blue Sargent and nothing was going to stop her from making her decisions.

Ronan kicked at one of the books scattered around the floor and said, “Whatever,” which meant that he was okay with it, because she was Blue Sargent and Ronan didn’t care what she did or didn’t do with her free time, and whether it involved the others.

He didn’t even really want to know what happened anyway. He already knew why, so what was the point?

Kavinsky was looking for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, guys!


	5. fault in my code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had hoped too much.
> 
> Ronan had left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to [Nick](http://aplatonicjacuzzi.tumblr.com) for helping on the crit side and the motivating me and stuff like that.
> 
> Send him nice messages, everyone!

**ADAM**

Henrietta was a town wrought from the earth; was sown from dust and bricks from the seventeen hundreds, that smelled dustier than the dust that Henrietta was sown from; and with rust gathering from its peak to its base. It was the place where the monsters were children and the bigger monsters were the people who produced the children. Psychics were a legitimate business, abandoned warehouses and factories littered the mountains from there to all the way to Singer’s Falls, and preppy boarding schools boarded the very beings that Henrietta was infamous for.

Henrietta, Virginia was a place like no other, a place of dirt poor quality and hicks for miles, and Adam had grown hating it with all his heart.

His first home was not a home. It was a double-wide trailer near the edge of town, containing a mother that was fit enough to raise a child but unfit to love it; a father that was more than unfit to be a father but had the guts to be disappointed by his son; and an only child who raised himself and had eyes that yearned for the world.

Their double-wide once had a decent garden hidden from the rest of the dull trailer park, which was the place that a younger him ran off to during _those_ nights, to stare at the sky above the forests that bordered the vicinity of the park, his young mind dying of curiosity but trained to merely observe.

It was definitely not the best household, and thinking about it made Adam sick to his gut, made his eyes glassy and hot, made his deaf ear ring with ghost aches of the crack to his head that had cost him its function.

Leaving was still the bravest decision he’s made for himself, and he allowed himself that indulgence.

His second home was above a place of sanctuary but was rarely ever that.

It was nothing, with wooden beams and sloping ceilings where his head heroically bumped for the first few weeks he moved in, and enough space for three pieces of furniture and four paces from the exit to the bathroom. The rent was barely affordable, but his pride did not allow him to move to a place that was cheaper. He’d convinced himself that it was the cheapest he could find.

It was nothing, but it was Adam’s nothing, and it was the nothing that he needed in those desperate times, when his life was at its lowest, and all he really needed was something he could have for himself.

(Oh, younger Adam, what a fool he’d been.)

And Aglionby, _oh_ dear Aglionby Academy. It was a place of wretched old money, full of children in various states of societal class, ranging from upper middle to filthy stinking rich. Adam was not in that spectrum. He was an outsider, a pretender, a loner. White trash, they used to call him, because being a local was bad, and being a _poor_ local was worse.

It was not unusual for there to be fake invites to parties that Adam didn’t want to be a part of. And though some of the students were genuinely friendly to him, they never really made an impact. Aglionby was just too rich for Adam’s liking.

The memory of it all reminded him of the time he’d gotten too sick to work, because he often reminisced when he was sick, when the dam in his head wasn’t up to par with the violent flow of memories that he usually refrained from pondering on.

It was a summer, one he could vaguely remember now, though he was sure it was a rather repetitive and mind-numbingly monotonous summer, like most of his summers before college.

This particular summer day stood out, because he had caught the Henrietta bug going around, the one that had been opening up all the slots at work because of his co-workers calling in sick. Adam didn’t expect to catch it, because he had high endurance and immunity to normal viruses like these. But there he was.

His apartment was suffocating, and Adam was suffocating, and his single IKEA-bought, hard as the floor mattress was not helping. His chest grew heavy and something buried in his lungs made him wheeze. His sheets were hot on his back, and sweat was pooling up his pant legs again. Like sickness, heat was another thing that Adam was normally immune to, so he did not know how to deal with this.

His eyes were focused, but unfocused, on the sloped ceiling of his room, his mind racing this way and that, thinking that maybe _this_ was how he was going to die, in the pool of his own sweat, on the third bell for afternoon prayer.

Adam Parrish, age seventeen, occupation: student. Cause of death: flu in the Virginian heat. Conclusion: too poor for flu medicine.

(He’d been exaggerating, of course, because he still reached twenty-five.)

Fast forward to seven years from then, Adam opened his eyes to the same predicament, his back pooling sweat, his gut wrenching like tightening rusty nut on a screw, his forehead sporting a blooming headache underneath it.

The ceilings were not sloped, and the room was not dim and dusty, because this was not his apartment in St. Agnes. This was his condo unit in DC, he’d been graduated for a year now, and he was a lawyer. He was lying down on a queen-sized bed, living lavishly off of sheets that did not make his skin itch.

But his throat was just as dry, and his ears were ringing. He was just as sick now as he was back then.

There was a soft click somewhere inside the apartment that brought Adam back to the real world. His mind reeled, and his headache made him see white spots in his vision. He realized that he’d woken up to the sound of the front door closing.

Then he remembered two plates of Chinese takeout in the sink that were left unwashed the night before, a movie forgotten in the background in the living room, and cold toes trying to warm themselves underneath his knees on the couch.

— _Ronan._

Adam pushed himself up by his elbows. Ronan had _left_ him in this state.

No, that was illogical, selfish, and unfair of him. Ronan probably didn’t know what his actions could have meant to Adam.

But Ronan left, and Adam had hoped too much even when he didn’t think he was hoping at all. His mind flashed back to the conversations from last night, the soft kisses they shared after dinner, Ronan’s arms around his torso.

He had hoped too much.

Ronan had left.

 

* * *

The wood was thin, but thickly spread across parks and streets. Old trees weren’t rare in the city, because thin elm trees hit Noah’s shoulders more often than the thick ones did.

He leaned on a sturdier sycamore to catch his breath, if only for a moment, his eyes darting through the early sunset light that shown through the branches.

Sounds of the streets flooded his ears, coming from either side of the wood, distracting him from the sound of wind hitting branches that he had to be wary of, from the sound of footfalls on the mossy floor that he needed to listen to.

He pushed off the sycamore, breaking into a silent sprint that experience had wrought. This was old sport, sprinting stealthily through the woods, but he was rusty. It had been three years since—

Over the rocks, stepping over twigs and roots, sneakers scuffing the edge of every step, Noah held his breath as he was suspended in thin air, his breath fogging up in front of his face. His chest collided with the earth, pushing out the breaths he was catching just as he pushed himself up on scraped palms and elbows.

With a grunt, he stood, wincing slightly as his vision darkened with the pain.

A white pelt, a tail sweeping at fallen leaves on the forest floor, green eyes searching his posture for signs of danger; Noah’s eyes remembered the images but they were lost in the sepia tone of the forest around him. Where were the others? Could they sneak up on a wolf?

Noah hissed and stopped short, feeling a jolt of pain running up his leg. He knew that he would heal quickly, but he frowned at the tear running down his jeans, his eyes set on the blood that didn’t flow out of the wound.

Damn, and these were his favorite pair too.

A leaf crunched, and it wasn’t Noah who’d stepped on it. His head whipped up, his bangs hindering his vision.

The shape of a wolf silhouetted by the fall sunset stepped closer, a low growl underneath the rumble of the wind and the sounds of the city around them. Noah pinpointed his hearing on this, his eyes darting around the clearing for signs of Blue in her turquoise sweater or Gansey in his pink one.

Where were they?

The growl approached him, sounding louder and louder, drowning out everything in his ears. Each step closer to Noah was like an earthquake louder than Noah’s heartbeat.

A rock flew across the space between his face and the wolf’s, the small rock hitting the wolf’s ruff—

**RONAN**

“Why is Noah the one telling me this again?” Ronan asked, watching Blue fumble with a needle and thread, with Noah’s pants settled on her lap. His ears were buzzing with the way that Noah had told the tale; with the way that the images were crisp on his mind like he was a different species, still; with the way that the tale made the hairs on his arms stand, from the image of watchful green eyes bearing down on him.

A dirty sock flew from one queen-sized bed to the other, hitting Ronan square on the jaw. Noah met Ronan’s pointed glare with his own, the effect of it becoming less serious and more comical because of his polka-dotted boxer shorts. Ronan breathed in through his nose, then out through his teeth, trying to distract himself from the feeling of imaginary chill biting at his skin.

“Pay attention to the story,” Noah scolded. Ronan rolled his eyes, his gaze falling back to Blue’s nimble fingers, which were doing a good job at repairing the tear in Noah’s jeans.

“Noah’s telling the story because I’m repairing his pants, now go back to listening to him,” Blue said, not looking up from her efficient work. Ronan raised a brow at this.

“I am listening, just not looking,” Ronan replied, because it was true.

“Sooner or later you won’t be listening anyway,” Noah muttered, because it was also true.

With a sigh, Ronan looked at Noah, “Look, man, just summarize it, okay?”

Noah leaned back against the wall, pouting in the most indignant way a twenty-four year old man could pout. “Gansey doesn’t get shit for running his mouth all the time.”

A voice rang over their conversation, “I heard that!”

“Fuck off and keep writing,” Ronan shouted back.

“Anyway,” Noah interjected. Ronan directed his attention back to Blue’s sewing in response.

“So Blue threw a rock at Kavinsky, then she got tackled. Then Gansey went and tackled him, which is dumb, right? Like, who would tackle a fucking wolf? Gansey would and he did.

“And then I went and pushed Kavinsky off of Gansey so that he wouldn’t die, and helped him up, and then Kavinsky was gone, probably sprinting through wooded parks butt naked. The end.”

Ronan looked towards Noah, raising a brow at the surprisingly smug look on his stupid pale face. He knew perfectly well that his rushed story-telling would attract Ronan’s attention.

Silence held up, because Ronan had nothing to say to that, and he had a clear rule on staying silent when the words couldn’t come to him. It was why he only ever had three friends who put up with him.

His mind was traffic on a weekend, cluttered and crowded, and just pure noise. His mind’s eye saw white pelt, green eyes, and a tail that reached the floor. At the same time, it saw bony fingers, the smile of a gold chain by prominent collarbones, and the same green fucking eyes.

They’ll haunt him forever.

— _He was never going to forget_.

He needed a walk.

“My stuff’s still at Parrish’s,” Ronan grumbled to himself. It was true, and it sounded less like an excuse to leave the suffocating corners of his mind and, more like a mantra to convince himself that he wasn’t bothered by this, by _him_.

Noah gave him that wide-eyed knowing look, and Ronan tensed.

He moved to stand, stepping over the dirty sock that fell to the floor with the movement. Noah and Blue’s eyes followed him; both pairs of eyes too brown, too unnerving, and too familiar to be sources of anxiety. Ronan brushed it off easily.

He was by the exit, shoving his socked feet into his boots when Gansey piped up from his and Blue’s room, “You owe me orange juice, Lynch. You’re not coming home without at least one carton.”

Ronan scowled, making sure to zip up his jacket before opening the door, “Right. Sure.”

* * *

**ADAM**

There were three efficient and loud knocks, evenly spaced and a bit daunting in the silence of his home. They made Adam’s head reel from his cluttered thoughts, made resounding clicks in his left ear that may have been ghost sounds.

His toes were numb, his mouth full of cotton, and his eyes hurt when he looked around too much. He stood in the middle of his kitchen, wearing nothing but his pajama pants.

In all honesty, he’d forgotten what he was doing there. His fevered brain couldn’t process the fact that the can of chicken soup was sitting inside the pot on the counter. When it caught up, he breathed a sigh of relief, because the can was not in the microwave and the pot was not on the stove.

Another three knocks made him realize that he was just staring at the can of soup, not moving to open the door. His movements were sluggish, like he was moving in water. His feet shuffled towards the door, his feverish hands moving to touch the cold metal of the door knob.

Another three knocks. Persistent and impatient, the person on the other side was probably getting restless. Adam’s brain flashed back to St. Agnes, to the looming shadow that blocked the light from outside, to three loud knocks coming in contact with the door, the booming voice behind it.

 _“Open up, I know you’re not doing anything worthwhile in there_.”

A confusing combination of certain and uncertain, he breathed in and opened the door. Robert Parrish was not behind it. Ronan Lynch was walking away from him.

— _Ronan left him_.

Ronan stopped mid-step, twisting to look back at the door. There was something wrong with his expression before the look of relief passed over his sharp features, and it made Adam’s gut twist painfully.

Ronan had taken a step forward, but Adam hadn’t noticed. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice soft in the chatter of the hallway. Adam could hear faint sounds of televisions in other rooms. He tried to concentrate on that, and not leaning into Ronan’s arms, which were trying to steady him; tried to concentrate on the shadows that the lights made, instead of the way that he noticed that Ronan smelled like the forest and misty mornings in Henrietta; tried to concentrate on his posture instead of Ronan’s eyes.

“Where were you?” Adam threw back at him. His voice was croaky and cold and guarded. Ronan’s face twisted to one of guilt, so raw and full of concern that he just couldn’t take it.

“You’re running a high fever,” Ronan observed, because his hands were still settled on Adam’s arms, and Adam was still wearing nothing but his pajama pants.  He realized too late that he probably should have put on a shirt before opening the door.

Adam stepped back into his home, letting Ronan in.

“So I am,” he said, and his voice sounded so cold for someone who had a fever. “Where were you?”

Ronan’s hands dropped to his sides. His face looked defeated, and Adam couldn’t bear to see it that way, but his insides were on fire and his mind was turmoil and debris and chaos.

He didn’t want to be mad. _Don’t fight with Ronan_.

— _Ronan left him_.

“I went home because the others got back from their trip last night,” Ronan explained, but his voice was silent. He knew perfectly well why Adam was being the way he was, and it made Adam sick.

His mind was conflicted. Voices were fighting it out in his head. Ronan was worried. Ronan left him. Ronan was just looking out for his friends.

— _Ronan left him._

Ronan sighed, a sound so tired that it made Adam sigh with him. “I was checking up on them. I’m sorry.”

He had a feeling that Ronan was not one for apologies, but he wasn’t sure if that was just him stroking his own ego.

“For what? I’m not mad at you,” Adam said, but it was a lie placed heavily on his tongue. Ronan knew.

“For not telling you before I headed out,” Ronan explained, ignoring the lie, his eyes were downcast. Adam stretched a hand out, but he didn’t remember himself doing that. His hand came in contact to Ronan’s cheek. Ronan’s eyes met his, and something shifted between them and around them.

“For worrying you,” he added, his voice low, like he hadn’t meant for Adam to hear it, but Adam heard it anyway.

“I’m not mad at you,” Adam said again, and this time, it wasn’t a lie.

Ronan twisted his head to kiss Adam’s palm, and Adam felt like he needed those steadying hands again, because the walls were spinning and yeah, maybe he really did need that can of chicken soup by the counter.

Adam pulled his hand from Ronan’s lips, his eyes never leaving Ronan’s.

“You’re sick,” Ronan repeated, and it was a fact. Adam was sick and has been all morning.

“Been a while since I have been, but yeah, I guess I am,” Adam heard himself say, his voice raw and pained. His accent was slipping out by seams that Adam tried hard to keep. Ronan hadn’t noticed yet, but he will soon.

Adam needed something for his throat. He walked towards the kitchen, ignoring the can and pot on the counter and pulling a bottle of water out of the fridge. The coolness of it all made his fingers numb, but he drank anyway.

Ronan stood, still, at the door, and there was still some guilt left in his expression.

Adam didn’t know what to do with that.

Ronan ran a hand through his shaved head, and he looked guiltier and guiltier by the second. If Adam didn’t know any better, it looked like he was about to burst into tears.

Adam didn’t know what to do with this.

“Ronan,” he called out, and his voice was less croaky now. Ronan didn’t look at him, so he tried again, “Ronan, are you okay?”

Ronan looked at him then, and there was something wrong in those eyes, something terrified and broken.

Adam didn’t know what to do with him.

He approached Ronan, his hands up in front of him, just in case Ronan snapped. Ronan’s eyes never left his. It was like approaching a wild animal, and it was unclear if one wrong step could send Ronan running out of here or if it would send Ronan into a snarling, venomous state.

Summer-sky blue became cloudy and gray, Ronan’s eyes were glassy and far away, and Adam was trying not to panic.

It was clear, then, that Ronan would never snap at him.

“Do you want me to call Gansey?” Adam asked, finally reaching Ronan. Gansey would know what to do, or Blue, or Noah. But he’s seen the way that Gansey and Ronan interact, knew that there was a deeper history between the two of them.

Ronan nodded, and his hands were shaking and cold. Adam grabbed both hands in an attempt to get them to warm up. Wordlessly, he led Ronan to the couch, sitting him down before settling right next to him.

His hands never let go of Ronan’s until he said, “Your phone.”

It was in Ronan’s left jacket pocket, and it had a missed call from a roaming number. Adam swiped past the notification and went for the contact list.

The phone rang between them three times, before someone picked up. “Ronan?”

There was a moment where Adam panicked, because he had no idea what to say to Gansey, he had no idea what was going on with Ronan.

Ronan picked up the phone and said in a steady voice, “Gansey, Adam has the flu.”

There was silence.

“Why did you tell him that?” asked Adam, confused and disoriented, his brain addled by the haze of a fever.

“I’ll be right there,” and then Gansey hung up.

Ronan looked at the phone in his hand, refusing to look at Adam. Adam lifted his chin with a gentle finger, reminiscent of the morning after they met, but this time Adam didn’t kiss him.

“Gansey can tell this story better than I can,” Ronan started, and he met Adam’s eyes, finally. They were determined and guilty, and so, _so_ sorry. Adam’s stomach dropped.

“I just hope you won’t hate me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be late to update the sixth chapter, because school starts up again soon, and I kind of have to rush the seventh and eighth simultaneously. I hope that's okay, guys! Comments are still very much appreciate, and might even motivate me faster.


	6. falling down like these autumn leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He waited, and waited, and waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, i did say there was going to be a hold up. here's the sixth chapter!  
> (this is probably just mostly exposition and tears, lbr)
> 
> comments are appreciated! also maybe angry messages to my inbox on [tumblr](http://stubbornjerk.tumblr.com)

**RONAN**

With Kavinsky knowing his address, and Adam finally acting up after getting bitten, it was a guarantee that Ronan Lynch was a complete and utter mess. On a normal day, Ronan would be troubled enough if he was to remember anything about Kavinsky, but his shadow was nothing to his actual presence. And added to the fact that the first person he’d begun to open up to after Kavinsky was—

He clenched and unclenched his fists by his side.

He waited, and waited, and waited. His mind was a mess, and he was sure that he looked like it. His socked feet roamed Adam’s kitchen, his shaky hands opening and closing drawers and cabinets. He wasn’t searching for anything, but the sound of wood slamming on wood was a good a sound as any.

He was restless.

He glanced at Adam and Gansey, sitting on the couch, huddled and murmuring under their breaths. He regretted ever saying that he didn’t want a part of that, but he also didn’t regret that he wasn’t talking about any of it.

He was conflicted.

What Gansey was telling Adam was this: Ronan was a werewolf in DC, and that was how it has been for three years, because his friends stopped being werewolves in Minnesota.

Ronan wondered how long Gansey was going to keep talking.

When Gansey had arrived five minutes after they talked on the phone, with his windswept hair and out of shape panting, claiming that he had taken Noah’s bicycle to get there ahead of traffic, he had brought a suitcase with him.

When he had set it down on Adam’s coffee table, it contained a multitude of curious things: an iPad that held videos and visual information on the presence of wolves and people who were wolves; articles from online news about wolf hunts and incidents; a yellowing copy of the Henrietta Gazette from six years ago, which showcased Ronan’s and the others’ faces and names when they all got reported missing and kidnapped.

Ronan was familiar with almost all of these things, because he’d seen them being packed by Samuel Beck himself, back in the ski lodge in Minnesota, watched as the others discussed that this suitcase was not a necessity, but a precaution. In case things got rough and Kavinsky had bitten someone while he was out wild.

Now, it was being used because it was Ronan who’d bitten someone.

He was regretful, and mournful, and grieving, like instead of losing a probable length of winter season, Adam was about to die. With what Ronan had done, he may as well have killed Adam, because how could he have let that slip? How could he have bitten Adam?

Sitting on the couch, watching each item transfer methodically from the suitcase to the coffee table, Adam’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, but the moment that suitcase closed and Gansey had set down all its content, his eyes pinpointed on that yellowing newspaper.

Gansey sat down on the love seat beside Adam’s couch and said, “This will _all_ sound insane, but you need to hear me out.”

Then Ronan decided to walk away from the conversation, because that newspaper contained the bane of Ronan’s existence.

It showcased their missing people case with a number that came up to five missing teenagers; showcased an article about a drug stash found on the fairgrounds two miles away from Henrietta, with suspicions of its owners and why they’d gone missing; showcased part of Ronan’s past that was distasteful and sickening.

— _He was never going to forget._

Ronan wondered how long Gansey was going to keep talking for Adam to hate him.

Frowning, Ronan retrieved the tea bags and mugs from where he’d seen them. He had to do something so that he won’t be listening into their conversation; so that he won’t be _so_ restless that he might just sit on the kitchen floor and just sleep; so that he won’t be tempted to _shift_ —

Ronan was a werewolf in DC but he was determined not to be.

He looked up from where he was waiting for the kettle to fill with water, looked at Adam’s profile from the kitchen, with the background of the white walls in contrast with the dark colors on his face, with the rays of sunlight pouring in from the unused balcony, with his face contoured and shadowed.

As if hearing Ronan’s thoughts, Adam glanced to the side, those cold blue eyes— nothing short of welcoming and focused— on Ronan, biting into his core and grounding him, telling him to _be Ronan_.

Ronan gave him a wave in return, weak and uncertain, before turning off the faucet and setting the kettle on the stove.

Ronan wondered how long Gansey was going to keep talking for Adam to not look at him like he was the only thing that was constant in this world, because Ronan didn’t think he deserved that much.

 In restless silence, he waited for the kettle to whistle, sitting on the stool by the counter, chewing at the leather bands on his wrists.

He waited, and waited, and waited.

 

* * *

“If you have any more questions, I’d be willing to—oh, thank you, Ronan,” Gansey said as Ronan brought them their mugs of tea. Blowing over the steam from his mug, he continued, “I’d definitely be willing to stay and answer them. It’s more favorable than having to write all day anyway.”

Adam looked at Ronan then, the steam making his face flush a little. His blue eyes were wide and twinkling with mirth. _More favorable,_ he mouthed at Ronan with one brow raised and his lips curling upward to one side.

He didn’t look like someone who’d just found out that the guy he was maybe-dating was a temperature-sensitive werewolf.

Ronan didn’t respond to Adam’s jabs at Gansey’s speech patterns, letting the humor seep out of the air. This was a situation that required seriousness, and it was a situation that Ronan was going to take seriously.

“You have something to ask,” Ronan stated, because it wasn’t a question, because he knew that Adam was a curious person, that he observed with those cold eyes when no one expected him to speak.

Adam’s smirk fell into a thin line, maybe just as disturbed by how much Ronan _knew_ as Ronan was, glancing around the room a little. “Yeah, I guess I do have one question.”

Ronan nodded for him to continue after he’d lifted his mug for a sip. Adam asked, “How many years have you been missing from Henrietta?”

It wasn’t the question Ronan had expected. With Ronan at a loss for words, Gansey spoke up, “Six years.”

Adam released a shaky breath, like he’d been anticipating that answer but didn’t want it to be true. Ronan was familiar with the concept. Adam ran a hand through his hair, blinking away the glassiness in his eyes though it was a futile attempt.

Why had Adam asked that question? Ronan didn’t know, but he wanted him to explain himself. He waited, and waited, and waited, but no explanation came. Adam just sighed, looked at Gansey and said, “That’s all I have, I guess.”

Ronan’s mouth twisted into something horrible, because it was familiar. He knew a lie when he heard it, because his brother was a liar and he grew up with it. But he kept silent, waiting for Gansey to speak, waiting for Adam to explain, just waiting.

“You’re taking this whole thing exceptionally well,” Gansey commented, and it was true. Ronan couldn’t laugh at the awe in his tone, because it was a little awesome that Adam wasn’t pushing them out of the condo unit.

Gansey gave a small laugh, but the look in his eyes were serious, “I’ve been led to believe that this is when people started either calling us crazy or calling the police, but you’ve taken this with grace. Are you sure you’re alright, Adam?”

Ronan had been on the receiving end of that long line of conversation that led to the exact same question many times. Drunken nights out on the porch of the ski lodge, waiting for his beast to conquer him. _Are you alright?_ Him, punching out the dashboard of his BMW, his eyes unbearably dry. _Are you alright?_ Laughing for five minutes with the silently disturbed audience inside the room. _Are you alright?_

The answer was almost always no.

Adam took a careful, composed sip of his tea and breathed out before answering, “I’m going to have to be. If what you’re telling me is true, I won’t last long in this weather. I might need to steady myself if the process is just as painful as you’re telling me.”

That wasn’t what Gansey had meant and they all knew it. Adam was a lawyer, so that meant that he lived off of facts and logic. Ronan hadn’t even seen them touch the iPad yet, so that meant that Adam was in the doubt. It was a strange thing, because it was a carefully conceived statement, what Adam had said. Ronan didn’t know what layers were false or true.

* * *

**ADAM**

When the door clicked shut, Adam wanted nothing but to sink into his couch and wait for the next tenant of this condo unit to find his decomposing body. The stress was getting to him, and with the headache that came along with the flu, Adam could use more than just a few cups of tea.

He could sleep forever.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Ronan asked softy, his socked feet sliding back to the carpet of the living room. Adam lifted his head to look at Ronan, who still wore his leather jacket despite having been inside the room for hours.

Adam’s mind registered the question, and he nodded dumbly. His mind often blanked out at the intense look in Ronan’s eyes.

— _I just hope you won’t hate me_.

He knew now, what that statement had meant, knew that Ronan was anxious because he’d bitten Adam in the middle of sex and didn’t care to worry about it immediately after.

“Did you not know?” Adam asked, voice hushed and blinks slowed, sitting up so that Ronan could sit down next to him. Ronan settled in, lifting his feet on the couch and laying his chin on his knees. He looked at Adam inquisitively.

Adam mimicked his pose, moving one of his feet to link with Ronan’s. “You bit me, and you’re sorry about it. Did you not know that you were going to…?” _Infect me_ , was what he was going to say, but Adam let it hang between them.

Ronan sighed, but the heaving breath was trapped between his knees and the back of the couch. Adam hummed and nodded. That meant _no_ , Ronan didn’t mean to bite him and involve him in this business.

“You’re not mad at me?” Ronan asked in turn, after a moment of silence. Adam blinked, his eyes scorching the back of his eyelids. Ronan’s eyes, intense and blue with regret and hope and anticipation, did not dare to leave him.

— _I just hope you won’t hate me_.

Adam shook his head carefully. “You didn’t mean to do it.”

Ronan canted to the side, towards Adam, and gave him a peck on the cheek. His lips were soft and warm, like his voice and his hands, and it felt something like _I’m sorry_.

Without acknowledging Adam’s surprised look from the move, Ronan leaned forward to grab the iPad from the coffee table. He had told Gansey to leave the suitcase behind.

 “What are you doing?” Adam asked, leaning his cheek on Ronan’s shoulder so that he could look. The videos were pulled up, and there were varying thumbnails of flushed shoulders and black tree trunks and snow so white that it rivaled the glow of the background.

Ronan looked over at him then, his finger hovering over one thumbnail that contained the familiar broad shoulder blades and tattoo. “I’m not confident that you actually believed all that Gansey said.”

And just like that, he was right. Adam knew that this was a big deal to both Ronan and Gansey, but though the facts held together, it all seemed too close to fiction to be true. People that turned into wolves during cold seasons, who would possibly be able to believe that on the spot?

And Adam was one of those wolves now. The absurdity of the situation was complex and confusing enough to disorient him.

Turning back to the iPad, Ronan tapped the thumbnail and slid the tablet towards Adam’s hands.

“ _This is subject number seventeen,_ ” a voice in the background said, and it sounded eerily familiar, like the kind of voice you’d hear on TV.

Ronan, on the video, slid out of his plain black shirt, stepping onto the brightly lit porch of their location in nothing but his boxer shorts and socks. “ _State your name, age, and the observation we’re making today, please._ ”

The Ronan on the video was younger, just as confident and sharp as the warm one next to Adam, but his voice was empty, and his eyes didn’t meet the camera like they did when he spoke to people face-to-face. What had happened to him? “ _Ronan Lynch, nineteen, drug anomaly shifting_.”

And just like that, the younger Ronan opened the door, followed closely by the camera man.

Adam watched as they stepped into the snow-covered forest outside of the building, watched the muscles on Ronan’s back ripple, the tattoo move, compressing and expanding like a heartbeat.

The video shook a little as the camera man jogged closer and Adam watched; watched Ronan crumple onto the snow; watched without blinking, how Ronan shifted from boy to wolf. Fur grew onto his back, brown and flecks of black from where his tattoo was supposed to be.

The wolf that was Ronan turned and stared the cameraman down, its eyes undeniably Ronan’s, blue and intense. The wolf snarled, barked, then backed away slowly, its eyes not leaving the threat.

There was a few minutes of tense silence as the cameraman didn’t dare to move and the wolf didn’t dare to blink. Then, the wolf shuddered, full-body shuddering, the type that seemed like something was eating it inside-out. There was a loud howl of pain coming from it.

“ _Sargent, his clothes!_ ” shouted the cameraman. Blue rushed out, in video, the same spiky hair waiting a few feet away as the wolf shook itself from wolf to boy. Ronan was shivering violently, his drool crystallizing as he lurched on the snow-covered ground and retched horribly. Nothing came out, but it sounded painful.

Adam’s hands were cold with terror and shaking violently. Silently, Ronan set the iPad down on the coffee table and grabbed Adam’s hands into his, in a motion that was reminiscent of what Adam had done to him earlier.

Though his hands shook, Adam maintained his voice, “Drug anomaly shifting?”

Ronan looked at him then, those eyes blue and intense and something else. Terror on Ronan Lynch’s face was as foreign as regret was to Adam Parrish’s psyche.

Ronan stroked the back of Adam’s hands, his own fingers only slightly shaking with the nervousness he didn’t dare show. “Shifting is activated in the brain, drugs fuck your brain up, and now my shifting is fucked up.”

Adam glanced at the coffee table, at where the yellowing Henrietta Gazette lay open and vulnerable to his roaming gaze.

Adam leaned forward slightly, watched Ronan’s eyes drop down to their hands, thought back to the apologetic look on Ronan’s face when he’d called Gansey.

— _I just hope you won’t hate me_.

Leaning forward, Adam pressed his lips on Ronan’s, softly and almost hesitantly. Ronan’s hands left Adam’s, caressing his arms with touches so light that it was almost like he thought that Adam would snap if he grabbed anything. Adam didn’t want that, he wanted solidity, sureness to balance his hesitance. Adam reached up, pulling Ronan in with the turn of his head and the pressure of his fingers around Ronan’s jaw.

“I will never hate you,” Adam whispered between soft sighs and lips, and it was right. Ronan was flawed, Ronan was human, Ronan was alive, and he was terrified of Adam’s judgment, terrified of his own past, terrified of himself, and Adam will never hate him. “It will never come to that.”

Ronan made a noise in the back of his throat, a small relieved noise that Adam wouldn’t have caught, if he wasn’t so enraptured by Ronan’s every move and sound.

Ronan pulled away first, resting his forehead on Adam’s, his eyes closed and his breathing coming in short. Adam felt savagely pleased at the flush that traveled from Ronan’s neck to his cheeks, to the tip of his ears. Ronan’s fingers wrapped around his ankle, and Adam broke.

“I—Ronan, I’m…” Adam stammered and stumbled, and he hated it, because he wasn’t going to bring it up just yet, but his mind was fevered and haunted by the past and haunted by the future, and there was that treacherous knee-jerk reaction of his from the past. Ronan had just showed him the awful parts of his life before DC, and Adam felt like he had to tell him something in return.

Compensation. An eye for an eye.

Ronan stopped breathing and pulled away from him, eyes now opened in slight concern.

Unceremoniously, Adam grabbed the yellowing Henrietta Gazette before he lost his courage, the bolded English script biting back at him, hissing at him. Ronan stayed silent as Adam brought the papers between them, staring at each individual picture.

The line-up was this: Gansey, Ronan, Blue, Noah, and another Aglionby student. The catch was this: he recognized the last one.

“Ronan,” Adam started again, looking up from the newspaper. The sheen of terror was back in Ronan’s eyes again, but his posture was comfortable. “I _went_ to Aglionby.”

The knot between Ronan’s brow was instant, and it was almost comical. Adam would have laughed if he wasn’t so nervous about the confession.

“I grew up in Henrietta, Ronan. I was a scholarship student at Aglionby, I was at the top of every class,” the words stung him as he heard himself say it. He never wanted to go back, but he was never going to forget.

Ronan glanced behind him, at the shelf of swimming trophies and wall of diplomas. Adam knew each letter engraved and embossed on the trophies and parchments of paper. Adam Parrish, 1st place in 100m Backstroke, Aglionby Academy. Adam Parrish, valedictorian, Aglionby Academy. The past stung, but Adam chose to bear it for the achievements. It was his wall of pride.

“And you didn’t recognize us?” Ronan asked, and it shook Adam out of his reverie. This was not expected, and Adam should have known not to expect anything from Ronan.

Adam shook his head, “It’s been five years, six since the news. I was too focused on graduating, picking out college, moving on before I even moved out.”

Ronan was not surprised enough for this confession, and Adam wondered what kind of expression he possibly could have wanted out of Ronan, wondered what reaction he’d gain if he’d told Ronan about his first household.

“Ronan,” Adam started again, and he hoped that Ronan could forgive him for throwing one personal question after another. “What are you and the others doing here in DC?”

The group didn’t have to be in DC for any particular reason; Adam shouldn’t be poking his nose into that business. But once he’d caught the taste of satisfaction after getting his curiosity sated, he was going to ask for more. It was a vicious cycle.

The group could have stayed in Minnesota, where they had a pack, where they could stay wolf for however long they wanted, where they could’ve never met Adam.

Why did Adam ask him that question?

Because he _had_ to ask, because there were five missing teenagers but there were only four people that Adam knew, and because he knew that Ronan would answer his questions.

“We’re looking for him,” Ronan pointed at the newspaper, at the article next to their missing people columns. _Missing Teenagers Leave Drug Stash in Fairgrounds,_ the title called out. Adam skimmed it.

The names Kavinsky and Lynch popped out.

Kavinsky. Like a wave that had receded from the shoreline, the first name came back to him. _Joseph_ Kavinsky.

* * *

**RONAN**

Ronan wondered: would it have hurt less or more if he’d actually loved Kavinsky? Had he felt something more than the gnawing at the empty hole left behind by the death of his father, the eternal slumber of his mother, and the distance away from the home he grew up in, would he have thought of Kavinsky as a thing of the past instead of letting him haunt the present?

“We’re looking for him,” Ronan had said, pointing at the news article that contained his and Kavinsky’s names, the one that knew about how Kavinsky had owned the tons of meth, cocaine, and marijuana stocked in that abandoned fairground, the one that talked about how Ronan was involved in it.

It was a laughable statement because for the past five years Ronan has done nothing but try to avoid the inevitability that was Joseph Kavinsky.

Adam looked at him, curious and concerned under the mask of realization that didn’t bode well. Adam, who’d lived in the same town as Ronan, who didn’t know about the six teenagers that went missing because he was too busy thinking for himself.

Ronan wondered what he was like, back in Aglionby.

Adam would have hated him then, because when Ronan lived in Henrietta, Ronan was what people would call trouble and was what locals called an asshole.

Ronan was rich and went to Aglionby, so of course the locals would say that. But he drove above the speed limit whilst drunk, decorated the door to his bedroom with speeding tickets, drank to his heart’s content, took whatever drug either another Aglionby student or hick would give him, and swore like it was his last day on earth every single day.

Fact of the matter was this: Ronan _was_ a reckless asshole, so he couldn’t very well deny the accusations. In fact, he was pretty sure that reckless asshole was his whole reputation, so he acted like one.

Adam would have hated him so much.

When Ronan lived in Henrietta, he was a whole other being from the one who lived in DC, because he was still mooching off of stocks of meth and marijuana in exchange for blowjobs and a finger raising hell on his skin.

It hurt to think of it like that, seven years later, because he found that his whole teenage experience was a knee-jerk mourning reaction for his troubled mind. He was disturbed and broken. He often picked fights where he could find it, even in Monmouth.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened. I was just curious,” Adam reassured, bringing him out of his downward spiral. Ronan was grateful for it, but shook his head.

“Ka—he and I, we used to be… together. Not officially anything, but we did things, well, _he_ did things, and I did things for the drugs and—” Ronan was a fumbling, stammering mess, eyes flitting around the room and at Adam, who was waiting patiently for him to just spit it the fuck out.

Ronan’s voice was stuck in his throat, along with the bile that came up from his stomach. He didn’t think he’d be saying it, didn’t think he’d tell Adam so soon. Adam deserved to know, if he were to ever encounter Kavinsky when he was with Ronan.

He just hoped Adam didn’t hate him now. The assurance in Adam’s tone earlier, the sound of relief that came out of Ronan’s throat and into Adam’s, it was temporary. Most things were. Ronan couldn’t remember the last time that he thought happiness and temporary weren’t synonymous.

“Ronan,” Adam said again, and it was solid and when he said it, it really sounded like his name. “You don’t have to tell me, I’m serious. C’mon, stop crying.”

Ronan wasn’t crying. He wasn’t. He was just telling Adam about Kavinsky.

Adam moved to touch his cheek, drawing him in again, and the lines on his cheek cooled with the movement, and Adam was still shirtless and his skin was burning hot against Ronan’s face buried in his neck.

Ronan heaved a deep breath, and that deep breath became a sob, and that first sob was followed by another, and now Ronan was crying.

This, Adam’s condition, Gansey and the rest getting hurt, _Joseph fucking Kavinsky_ , this was all Ronan’s fucking fault.


	7. scared my love, you'll go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The inevitability of Adam shifting inside his condo unit was looming upon Ronan’s head since they had their brunch, and Ronan couldn’t bear the thought of reversing the shift by trapping Adam inside his own bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this chapter was late, but i had to trudge through the ninth chapter this week, since school is starting again! :(
> 
> here's the extra special seventh chapter, guys. it's a lucky number, and damn good one. thanks again, to [Nick](aplatonicjacuzzi.tumblr.com) because if it wasn't for him, i wouldn't be posting this chapter!

The sun was high enough in the sky that the branches shadowed like cracks on his cold pale skin. He was freezing, but not freezing enough to trigger the shift. Silently, he stood over what he was doing before, to stare at three lifeless pigeons at his feet, each staring up at him with beady eyes and beaks hanging open. His hands were bloody, and his thighs were bloody, and he couldn’t get the smell out of his nose.

Shrugging, he trudged towards the sounds of the city, hoping to see anything hanging by clotheslines between buildings or from unsuspecting backyards. He kept alert, silently sprinting across the streets in all his two-legged grace.

The streets of the suburb were empty. People were either inside their houses or out in the city.

Something akin to relief released the breath pent up in his lungs when he got out of the forest to find no one around to shout at him for public indecency. The first time that had happened, he sort of knocked the person out, out of the savage mixture of annoyance and shock in his gut.

He happened upon a two-story house with an open yard and a considerable lack of dogs guarding it. A clothesline held button-ups and shorts and various other articles of clothing. Looking around, he turned on a faucet protruding out from the ground, grabbing the end of the hose and cleaning himself up from the blood of multiple pigeons and possibly other rodents. Afterwards, he grabbed a button-up and khaki shorts from the clothesline, a pair of flip flops by the back porch, and made a run for it, pausing behind some other house’s fencing to get dressed.

Out on the streets, no one suspected him of anything. People these days were so gullible they wouldn’t even figure that maybe he was a thief or a murderer or a pickpocket. Well, he was all of those in some context, but the thought was this: no one noticed.

DC was sunny and full of life, constantly moving with the sound of vehicles and music from ice-cream trucks and dogs being walked in the park. Children ran past him, laughing and shrieking, making something ring in his ear. The air smelled like dog shit and ice cream, and whatever the man by that fountain was smoking.

With a frown, he rolled his eyes. _How boring_.

On a whim, he entered the first store in the district. The bell over the door rang clear and true, announcing his presence inside the store.

The smell of old paper and ink immediately assaulted his nose. He made a face to himself. Oh great, a _bookstore_. How dull could he have gotten?

There was a thud from the counter that brought him out of his reverie. He looked up at the source of the sound, and grinned.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the girl at the counter snarled. He shrugged, all casual.

“Is that any way you treat your customers, Ms. Sargent? Really, and after all the effort of a house visit yesterday,” he drawled, striding on over to the counter like he came here every day. Innocence was so easy to feign when he didn’t really give a fuck.

He gave more than just a house visit.

Sargent drew back, scowling. She spat, not literally, at him, “Stay away from us, asshole.”

He rolled his eyes, ignoring the dull ache that echoed in his chest at the statement. “You fucking idiots should have thought of that when you moved here three years ago, yes? How’s the old mutt doing, by the way? Have you and Dick been giving him good leash lately?”

This was a taunt and a threat. He wanted Sargent to know that he knew that they brought the whole Henrietta pack here just to see him. He wanted Sargent to know that he knew when that they moved, exactly three years ago. He wanted Sargent to know that he knew that Lynch was still uncured.

Disgusted by his taunts, Sargent proceeded to ignore him in favor of cleaning up the counter.

He made a show of gritting his teeth, the line of his jaw shifting with the action, leveling Sargent with a look. She steadily ignored him. It was a futile attempt, but he had tried anyway.

He reminisced, briefly, in the days when Sargent used to hate him so much that he could feel her quiver beside him, when she thought that he didn’t notice. Of course not, he was too hyper-aware of the people around him not to notice her, but he would never admit that.

He pushed back from the counter.

How boring, really. He expected a fight out of that. At least something to get him kicked out to the streets again. When had Sargent gotten so boring? She used to get all up on his face when he threw words around like that. It was why he even spoke to her right then, in that bookstore.

He was itching for a fight.

With a disappointed sigh, he walked towards the exit. Behind him, Sargent said something under her breath, “He doesn’t want you anyway.”

The laugh that was wrenched out of him at that was empty. No. He didn’t care, he didn’t give a fuck. Without turning, he said, “He never wanted me.”

That was right, Lynch never wanted him. Thing was, he was the one who never quit on the mutt, but he’ll never admit that to himself either.

The bell behind him rang again, as he exited the store, the sounds of the city hitting him like a gust of wind. He breathed in the smell of smoke and sickness and gave a melancholic sigh.

He walked, and walked, and walked, looking around like a tourist. He’s lived here for three years and he could never really see the appeal. He should have brought his car with him, made something happen, caused an explosion. It’s been a while since burned something down.

Maybe he could buy another car, just like the good old days.

He turned the corner, cursing at the person that almost hit him. Then, he froze.

Something caught his eye, a peculiar, familiar sight. The sense of melancholy grew within him. He remembered this; he got blown against the hood of this vehicle so many times in high school.

An old, black BMW M3, sleek and dewy from the morning mist was parked right next to a meter, but there was a ticket stuck to its hood. He couldn’t help the wicked grin in his face, and the drums starting up in his ears.

 _There you are, Lynch_.

**ADAM**

To avoid the awkward tension hanging in the air between them, Ronan settled for slamming cabinets around Adam’s kitchen again. Sooner rather than later, Adam realized that Ronan had been cooking the whole time. Ronan Lynch, apparently, was so all-or-nothing, that he would either not do anything or do something that would make his presence known.

So, loud-cooking it was.

Whenever he could, Adam would catch a glance, trying to see if there was still something going on inside Ronan’s head. He knew that he wouldn’t see anything, because Ronan was good at hiding, but he was doubtful. Something about the line of Ronan’s shoulders, or the way he held himself, or the way his eyes slid over Adam’s body, like he was checking for something—like Adam was the one who was behaving oddly. Something about all of it made it seem like there were still lingering thoughts in Ronan’s head. It was enough to set Adam’s teeth on edge.

Adam would never forget the sound of Ronan’s voice, vulnerable and watery and terrified. It was nothing like him and everything like him, and it made something inside Adam screech into a halt to watch the spectacle with awe and sympathy. Ronan Lynch had seemed so unmovable the day they met, but Adam had just witnessed something akin to a magnitude eight on the Richter scale, and to say that it was devastating would have been an understatement.

Gathering up the dishes and dumping them on the sink after eating—two plates of omelet, buttered toast and orange juice—Adam glanced at Ronan, and saw the first sign of vulnerability since half an hour ago, saw the tired look on Ronan’s face as he stared, focused and unfocused, at the counter.

“I’m going back to bed,” Adam said, his voice forced into being casual because he knew Ronan would never take lightly to concern after what had just happened. When Ronan didn’t snap out of it, Adam set a gentle hand on Ronan’s shoulder.

Adam kept his hand on Ronan’s shoulder, the taller man lifeless and dull and tired under the weight of his hand. Ronan looked up at him, nodded, and trudged to bed with him.

Not even ten minutes after they settled back into the sheets, Ronan pushed himself up and out of it like he couldn’t bear to be there for more than that. Adam heaved a silent sigh of disappointment, but was eternally glad to see Ronan out of whatever haze he was in.

“I’m taking you over to the warehouse,” Ronan stated, his head suddenly inside Adam’s closet as he picked out about three jackets and shoved them at the general direction of Adam’s bed.

After getting his whole Tuesday morning run over by incredibly upsetting news about himself, Adam had planned on spending the rest of his day on bed with Ronan. Adam couldn’t help the audible disappointed sound that came out of his throat at the prospect of having to go out while he had a flu.

Frowning, Adam sat on the edge of the bed, his toes touching the carpet, and his face catching the pair of socks thrown at his face. “Does it have to be today?” he practically whined, because he only ever had two days off every three work days, and he wanted to spend this day doing nothing stressful. He guessed it was too late for that, after this morning, but he couldn’t help but whine anyway.

“Yes,” was the only answer he got, as Ronan pushed past cartoon tees and tank tops folded in a neat pile.

Adam struggled to pull on his socks, lying flat on his back and lifting his foot up in the air. “The warehouse?” he asked between grunts. Ronan turned to him and shoved the closet doors close, apparently now done with perusing the contents of Adam’s wardrobe.

Ronan Lynch did little else but shove anything he could push gently, but the moment his hands reached for Adam’s other sock and foot they were as gentle and as warm as Adam had recalled them to be. Adam let him pull the sock on, only to wave him off to do it all himself. He was sick after all, not helpless.

Ronan stood back, hands on his hips as Adam stood to slip into his pants. “It’s where I live,” he stated, restlessly looking around the room to do something other than stare at Adam. His hands were busy with the leather bands on his wrist.

Adam stood, jumping into one pant leg, then the other, “You live in a warehouse? How are you still alive?”

Ronan scoffed and dismissed his questions, like Adam was the one not getting anything in this situation. Adam couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

 

“Where did you say you parked the car?” Adam asked when they stepped out of the elevator. He paused to nod at the operator before following Ronan.

Ronan looked around the lobby, squinting at anyone who laid their eyes on him for more than two seconds. His shoulders were tense and his gaze was suspicious. Adam’s mind flashed back to their conversations earlier this morning, how the group all moved to DC to look for Joseph Kavinsky, how the group (minus Ronan) probably just got back from trying to hunt him down.

Ronan glanced at him, eyes softening around the edges and shrugged, “I didn’t, but I know where it is. Stay here, I’ll drive it around to the front.”

“Okay,” Adam said, nodding.

As an afterthought, he tossed Ronan his beanie. Ronan caught it, stared at it, then at Adam, lethal brow raised in question. Adam gestured to the entirety of his head before turning to sit on one of the chairs set out in the lobby.

Ronan shoved the beanie on before braving the chill of the DC streets.

Adam tried to convince himself that Ronan was going to come back for him, called himself stupid for thinking Ronan would leave him after everything that had happened this morning. The thoughts were freight trains and he was tied to the tracks. The residual anxiety seemed stuck to the back of his mind like stickers he could never peel off right.

He couldn’t fucking help it.

A horn blared loud throughout the lobby, and Adam took that as his cue. The anxiety in his stomach prowled, and for the first time that day, he felt symptoms of panic slip up his spine, because there was an infinitesimal but gradual chance that what Ronan and Gansey had said was true and he still couldn’t quite believe it.

**RONAN**

The warehouse was not as silent as it was when he’d arrived the other day, and it was a relief to arrive with it that way. As soon as he turned off the radio, he could hear the sound of Blue’s pop music, so that meant that Gansey was the only one upstairs. Upon opening the door, he could hear the steady roll of wheels on concrete, meaning that Noah was on the first floor again, attempting to wreck whatever it was that he had stored in there.

Chances were, it was something that had a slope to it.

Ronan didn’t even knock when he barged into the first floor of the warehouse, making sure to wait for Adam to enter before he closed the door.

The first floor was not so much crowded as it was cluttered with various things in every direction. There was a small pile of blankets on one corner of the wide space, and a cooler on the other. The four bins by the door were the only thing orderly inside the room, and Ronan knew that it contained clothes for all four occupants inside the warehouse and more. It was a set-up they borrowed from the ski lodge.

Noah skidded to a stop, his sneakers scuffing the concrete. As expected, there were two ramps set up, apart from each other, and three cans of Coca Cola stacked in the middle.

“Adam, hey, you guys didn’t call ahead,” Noah said in lieu of a greeting. He kicked up his board and brushed his bangs to the side.

Ronan grunted, glancing at Adam. “Clear out,” he told Noah, “and get Gansey down here.”

Noah took a moment to pause, his brown eyes narrowing in a way that only Ronan knew was mild curiosity.

“Noah, just fucking do it,” Ronan huffed, but there was no anger in his tone, only impatience and mild annoyance.

Noah went and did it, hastily dropping his board on the way out of the first floor. Adam stood beside him, watching all of this go down in that silent, unnerving way of his. Ronan clenched and unclenched his fists by his side so he wouldn’t pull at the leather bands on his wrists. The air was getting thinner around them by the second.

On the way to the warehouse, which was usually just a fifteen minute walk from Adam’s apartment but took an hour in the car, they talked about why Adam was to be brought to the warehouse.

The inevitability of Adam shifting inside his condo unit was looming upon Ronan’s head since they had their brunch, and Ronan couldn’t bear the thought of reversing the shift by trapping Adam inside his own bathroom.

“Then, why are we going to… the warehouse, if I’m going to be shifting?” still, Adam was skeptic on having to call it a warehouse, and even more skeptic on thinking about shifting as a concept. He would have to see it to believe it, or well, do it himself, Ronan thought.

Ronan glanced at him for a second, with his wrist dangling by the wheel casually as they waited by a red light. Adam was pale with sickness and looked about ready to nod off in his seat.

Intrusive thoughts couldn’t help but push into Ronan’s mind. Intrusive thoughts like: what color would Adam’s pelt be? Would it be the sandy blond tone of his hair right now, or some other color? Would his blue eyes retain that knowing glint as another species? Would he remember himself even when he wasn’t?

“We have extra space in case we had to deal with newbies,” Ronan explained. The word _recruit_ was on the tip of his tongue, out of reflex. He knew that Gansey had explained to Adam that most new wolves were recruited, but it still hurt to admit it to himself.

Adam had been an accident. Adam wasn’t supposed to be bitten. Adam was his fault.

_It was all Ronan’s fault._

The door of the warehouse squeaked open, revealing a slightly disheveled Gansey. His sweater was thrown in on the last minute, and he wasn’t wearing any shoes with his track pants. His glasses looked like they were about to fall off his nose, but all Ronan could focus on was the split-second look of fatigue on his face.

“Parrish, Lynch,” Gansey said in that honeyed voice that was so fake that Ronan could almost feel himself getting angrier than his guilt could manage. “What’s thi—oh, right.”

Just like that, Gansey knew what Ronan’s plan was.

Adam threw his hands out, a gesture that was so nervous that Ronan was surprised he even did it. “So,” his voice was an octave higher when he said it. “How’s this going to go down?”

Ronan reached for him, tugging at his scarf. Adam stumbled closer, but didn’t resist. “First, you need to get cold. Strip down.”

Adam laughed, still a bit high from nervousness and that twinge of panic that Ronan knew existed within the caverns of Adam’s mind. “You sure this isn’t your way into a threesome?” Adam teased, the tone of his voice low and mischievous between them. Ronan looked him in the eyes with a look that said that he wished he could joke with Adam right then.

Adam’s smile slipped when Ronan didn’t dignify that with a response. Silently, Ronan helped strip Adam down to his barest: his boxer shorts and nothing else. Behind the both of them, Gansey pressed the button that Ronan knew to control the high windows and fled out of the first floor. Adam turned around so that his back was to Ronan, and made a full-body shiver that shook Ronan to his core.

Ronan couldn’t bear to look, so he closed his eyes, kept his arms around himself, and took in the lingering smell of Adam from the clothes in his arms. He wished he could shift with Adam, wished he could forget this moment, wished he had nothing to do with this.

Bones cracked, and he could hear silent sobs racking a frame that was no longer there, and he could hear nails scraping the concrete, and he should have left the warehouse like Gansey did minutes ago.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes, because being weak in front of a wolf was the number one rule that warred against every fiber of his being, though it was prudent to be weak for the sake of survival. It was a daily dilemma, between Ronan and survival. Familiar blue eyes looked up at him, intelligent and knowing, and Ronan couldn’t breathe because they were all Ronan had to look at, could look at, even.

_Adam_

The door behind him opened, squeaked and clattered.

The wolf drew a step back, caution flooding his eyes. Ronan caught images in his head: him standing deeper into the warehouse, with the wolf in front of him, blocking him from the silhouette by the door; them making a run for it outside. It was all animal instinct and it set Ronan’s teeth on edge.

He’s never been so close and so far from shifting simultaneously.

Outside, Gansey was shouting.

Ronan turned around and faced the door.

Green eyes digging in through the closing scab in his chest, teeth so white it hurt to look at, and a grin sharper than Ronan’s.

Ronan couldn’t breathe.


	8. ako ay walang lakas ng loob para tumanggi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was an instant but it was forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title translates from filipino: _i don't have the strength to deny_

**RONAN**

It was an instant but it was forever. With the scene came the sound of a train on the tracks, the sound of drums beating simultaneously, loud and insistent and all-encompassing, the sound of Ronan’s heartbeat in his ears and in his veins and in the tremble of his hands. He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.

Behind Ronan, there was the rumble of a growl, low in a wolf’s throat. Behind him, there was muffled scritch-scratch of nails on the floor coming from under paws that wanted nothing but dirt beneath it.

 In front of Ronan, the door was open; the cold wind flew in around him and at him. In front of him stood the presence of a ghost he’s avoided for so long.

In a split second, Ronan fell forward, walking out the door to give a not-so gentle shove to Kavinsky’s arm and shut the door behind them. In a split second, his mind was at ease, was quiet, and was empty and indecisive. And in the next split second, it was noise and panic. Images flashed in his head, but he didn’t catch them. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from shifting if he did.

It was a stand down. Ronan leaned back on the door for support, and stared right at Kavinsky, silent but not speechless. His mind was running a mile a minute. He could tell Kavinsky to fuck off, he could tell Kavinsky that he was better than this now, he could—

The ghost, the asshole, that _motherfucker_ Kavinsky was smirking at him and it sent his nerves into overdrive. The blood beneath his skin began simmering, solid against the chill of the autumn air. Gansey was off to the side, frowning disapprovingly, but not coming any closer.

For the first time since Henrietta, Ronan was itching to punch something, or someone. He kept Adam’s clothes tight to his torso, just so he wouldn’t feel the tremble to his hands, the heat settling onto his knuckles.

He was as far away from triggering a shift as he was from kissing Kavinsky at the moment.

His silence was a force in and of itself. It was less nervous and more oppressing than he made it out to be at first. He saw something in Kavinsky’s face— _or was it in his posture?_ — falter. Ronan almost laughed, but he kept his face straight, and his voice silenced.

What did Kavinsky expect him to say, after all that happened? What did Kavinsky think was going to happen when he came here to see Ronan?

After the pills and bottles shoved at Ronan all those years ago, just so he could comply with every push and shove and bruising touch; after Kavinsky had shifted and ran off from the vehicle they’d taken to Minnesota and never came back; after the phone call from four years ago from a payphone to Ronan’s personal phone—the call that was so full of shit that it made Ronan’s ears ring, but was informative enough of Kavinsky’s location—honestly, Ronan couldn’t think of what Kavinsky would have wanted him to say in this exact moment, and it was a laughable thing, really, that he even expected Ronan to say something.

Kavinsky’s smirk turned into a frown, a result of the oppressing silence, a frown that chilled a bit of Ronan’s seething anger with fear. Ronan didn’t budge from the door though, merely stared down those unbearably green eyes and stood his ground. The disinterest on his face was genuine, but it wasn’t casual.

“Leave,” Ronan pushed through gritted teeth, his face still straight but his voice charged with hatred. Kavinsky’s face faltered again, a telling thing, like the twitch that the statement brought to his brow.

Ronan paid it no mind. He was done making excuses.

Kavinsky didn’t say anything, then, didn’t try to repair any damage that was too far gone, like he did in that one phone call that he made to Ronan four years ago, but it felt horribly like he would. There was this telling thing on his face that made it seem that way to Ronan.

No, he thought to himself, Kavinsky was born to destroy everything he ever had, and now that he had nothing but himself, it was a bit of a miracle he even reached past the age of twenty. He shouldn’t expect anything less than compliance.

There was something sick twisting in his stomach as he watched Kavinsky turn his head at Gansey, his eyes grazing the sharpness of Kavinsky’s face. Turning, Kavinsky drew about six paces before Ronan added, “If I see you come near anyone I know ever again, I’m going to kill you.”

No insults were added, just the threat. It has been more than enough years, but he knew that insults and names were synonymous to flirting with Kavinsky.

Kavinsky paused and turned to look at him again. “Depends if you’ll see me do it.”

Then he walked away, leaving nothing but the mess he’d made of Ronan.

 

Ronan sighed as he heard the sound of the last step squeaking, but didn’t open his eyes to look. The chill surrounded him, but he paid it no mind. After the spectacle earlier, his beast was tame and relatively far from shifting, like it was when Ronan badly needed it.

He wanted to forget.

— _He was never going to forget_.

In a tired voice he said, “That better be meat for the wolf because if it isn’t, I’m going to—”

The plastic bag hit his thigh a little too hard, but Ronan schooled his expression so that he wouldn’t cringe from it. It was warm inside the bag that held it, stinking of blood.

Gansey said, “I’m here to apologize, if you would give me a few minutes of your time.”

Ronan opened his eyes and peered up at Gansey.

Gansey was considerably less of a wreck than he was earlier, when Ronan and Adam had arrived. Now he looked more presentable, which meant that he probably got some sleep. His contacts were in, and he was wearing a polo-sweater vest-khaki pants combo that would have had Blue in a fit several years ago.

With a sigh, Gansey sat down next to him, saying, “I should have said something when Joseph arrived earlier. Instead, I just stood there and watched, and I’m sincerely sorry about that.”

Ronan didn’t know what he was supposed to be sorry for in that situation, because it was all definitely Ronan’s fault, but he regarded Gansey silently.

In the dim light of the fairy lights that Blue had hung around the warehouse, Gansey looked like he did years ago, when Ronan was frustrated out of his mind, hateful of himself, and closeted. There was a smudge of something by his cheek, and his lips were chapped, and his gaze was unfocused as he stared out into the parking lot.

Years ago, Ronan would have wanted to punch something, because he was always angry and always frustrated, but now, he just closed his eyes and took deep breath.

Restless, he huffed, shuffling to open the door behind him, enough to push the bag through the opening. Silence reigned around him and inside the warehouse, and if Ronan hadn’t been guarding the door for the last few hours, he would have thought that Adam wasn’t inside the building.

Vaguely, he thought, maybe they needed to transfer Adam somewhere he could hunt for his own food.

“I handled it,” Ronan said offhandedly, in reply to Gansey’s earlier apology.

“You did,” Gansey told him. “You handled it quite well.”

Ronan didn’t smile, but his face remembered the idea of it. “Thanks.”

Boots crunched at the gravel of their lot, and Ronan and Gansey looked up to see Blue Sargent walk up to them, looking haggard and frustrated, which Ronan honestly thought was her natural state.

She pointed at Ronan accusatorily but a bit mockingly, her fingers red at the tip where they couldn’t be warmed by her knitted gloves. “Your ex visited the bookstore earlier today and was rude. I just wanted to say.”

Then, she pointed at Gansey, “Your outfit looks like shit. I also just wanted to say.”

Then, she walked off, and up towards the living quarters of their warehouse, like she did not just walk up to both boys and somehow moderately insult them.

Gansey and Ronan took the moment to look at each other, then laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Ronan forgot to feel the cold around him.

**ADAM**

He felt searing pain in his bones, in his guts, in his head. His muscles stretched, and he wretched, but he had nothing to push out. The pain was mind-numbing and dizzying in its effects.

He had no ruff, he had no paws, he had no fur. The pain ebbed away any recognition of those sensations and parts. Adam remembered and forgot. He remembered the fateful spring evening that he lost his hearing, remembered his double-wide, remembered the fist perpetually swinging at him. He forgot the hours locked inside a warehouse, forgot the raw meat going down his throat, forgot howling or the sensation of it.

He was Adam Parrish, twenty-five years old. He was a lawyer who lived in a condo unit in uptown DC. He grew up in Henrietta, Virginia, and graduated as a valedictorian in Aglionby Academy.

His hands scuffed the floor beneath him, wet with something he couldn’t recognize, his knee joints aching as he tried to push himself up.

“Holy _shit_ , it worked,” came an awed whisper, but the pain erased his comprehension of the words.

It was so warm, and Adam was so hungry and tired. His nerves burned against his skin. His eyelids grew heavy.

“Adam,” a worried voice called, and warm hands hovered by his arm. “Stay awake.” Adam opened his eyes and remembered. He remembered hands clutching his hips, remembered warm lips on his neck, remembered summer-sky blue eyes that stared at him with such intensity.

How could he have forgotten this?

Adam was too weak to wrap his arms around Ronan’s shoulders, but he wasn’t too weak to croak out a, “ _Ronan_ ,” and pull himself up completely.

Someone cooed and said, “I would take a picture right now, if Adam wasn’t naked and standing in a pool of his own saliva.”

He looked around, his eyes finding heaters around a living room set up and beakers on the center table. Noah stood by the side, holding blankets and towels, waiting. Blue and Gansey stood together, with a syringe in Gansey’s hand, and a look of amusement palpable on Blue’s face.

Adam then noticed that he was naked.

“Ronan,” he said again, and his throat hurt too much to say more than that, but Ronan understood enough to step back.

The blankets were around his shoulders in an instant, but he didn’t see Noah step around to wrap him in them.  Ronan didn’t let go of his hands, and he was thankful, because his knees were shaking still and he wasn’t about to test them. He took a deep breath as he was maneuvered to the couch of the living room set-up they stood in, watched as Gansey mopped up the liquid (that was apparently his own saliva) on the floor.

It was all true. He could turn into a wolf based on the temperature. _He_ _could turn into a fucking wolf_.

A glass of water was handed to him, and he looked up to see Ronan, hearing him mumble, “Drink up so you can eat. Gansey will tell you everything.”

 

Adam felt much better and much, _much_ worse when he was clothed and his hunger was sated.

The heaters around him kept his temperature in check. In his peripherals, he could see Noah wipe away at the sweat forming by his brow. He didn’t bother with it.

Something ached inside him, but it was bearable enough to ignore.

— _He could turn into a fucking wolf_.

“We actually had to call across the country to get that concoction down to a tee,” Blue told him conversationally. Adam nodded, only half-listening.

“It’s pretty tough to snap someone out of stabilizing their shifting. St. Clair said it would work, but _some_ _of us_ were doubtful,” she added, the last part aimed at Noah.

“Hey, there was a chance it could have failed,” Noah protested, then something clicked inside Adam’s head.

“Wait, St. Clair? You mean, _Cole_ St. Clair.” Adam asked, interrupting the banter that was bound to have happened. Beside him, Ronan seemed appreciative of this.

Gansey scoffed lightly, “The one and only.”

Blue laughed, “Shut up, Gansey.”

Adam tuned them out as they began arguing amongst themselves. He thought back to the video that Ronan had showed him, remember the voice behind the camera. It was Cole St. Clair.

Ronan bumped him in the shoulder then, knowing grin on his face. Adam felt a smile pull at his lips.

“I didn’t know you knew famous people. A bit biblically too,” Adam joked under his breath, wagging his brows at Ronan.

Ronan snorted, but there was a certain hue to his skin that made it look like he was actually blushing. It made Adam smile wider. “He only knew me by my ass. Plus, he was taken and it was for science,” Ronan quipped.

There was a gagging noise from the general direction of Noah, and Blue made a move to kick at him but he was out of reach. Gansey cleared his throat, bringing Adam’s thoughts far away from Ronan’s ass.

“Get it, Lynch,” Noah stage-whispered, making Gansey sigh exasperatedly and fondly, with the shake of his head. Gansey looked at Noah as if to ask _are you done?_ And Noah nodded, pleased with himself.

Once again, Gansey cleared his throat, but it was for the sake of niceties than it was to actually clear his throat. “Adam, we brought you back from shifting to tell you that we’re going to need to move you so that you can shift properly. The authorities might catch on that we’re keeping a wolf in what’s basically our basement. Did you know that wolves howled so loud?”

The last question was directed at Ronan, who shrugged.

Adam’s smile slipped. He glanced at Ronan, who was messing with the stray threat by the pajama pants that Adam had borrowed from Gansey.

Gansey considered this, “I suppose I was too busy when I was in Minnesota to actually hear howling…”

 “Move me where?” Adam asked, interrupting Gansey’s contemplation, “And for how long?”

Gansey didn’t seem nervous at all, while delivering the news, and it made something like anger bubble up inside Adam’s head. It wasn’t Gansey’s fault, but Gansey was part of the problem, and Adam had no idea what that problem was.

“The nearest isolated wooded area,” Ronan muttered under his breath, but he was still not looking at Adam.

Adam processed this for a second before shaking his head.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not—I’m not going back there.”

Blue spoke up beside him, curious and concerned. “Back where?”

Adam just shook his head, looking directly at Ronan. “I’m not doing it.”

“It doesn’t have to be Henrietta, Adam,” Ronan said, his voice still quiet but loud in Adam’s good ear, like this conversation was just between the two of them, and now that Adam thought about it, it didn’t have to be with Gansey, Blue, and Noah at all. “It could be somewhere near Richmond, or some private resort we could keep for the winter season.”

“The _winter season_ ,” Adam echoed, his voice hysterical, not sure if he was unwilling to believe that he would be gone for the whole of December through January or if he just didn’t believe it. He had work, he had to pay rent, he had a _life_ and taking a break for the whole of winter season seemed absurd. Even when he lived in Henrietta, he didn’t do that.

It seemed like too big of a thing to stop doing something he always did so abruptly, and so near Henrietta. Richmond wasn’t that far of a place, a few minutes by bus, depending on the traffic, but as a mindless wolf, who knew if he were to end up near Henrietta in the matter of days or weeks.

He was afraid that if he touched Henrietta soil, he would get pulled in like quicksand if he tried to leave the borders again. He would never be able to leave. The dirt would be stuck beneath his fingernails, and the sound would be stuck to the roof of his mouth. His bad ear would ring and a fist would—

 “I’m sorry,” Ronan whispered, and it was the raw guilt and regret in his voice that made Adam remember that, right, it was Ronan who’d gotten him into this mess.

There was a silence before Noah spoke up, “Will the fever work on him while he’s still at that stage?”

Adam had heard of the fever. Gansey had explained that to him. Something to make the toxins in his brain think that it was always warm. But it only worked if it was injected to him when he was shifted, and it was a temporary solution to the problem.

But it could still work.

Adam hoped he didn’t look too hopeful when he gave Ronan a look. Ronan mirrored it, so it was probably a futile effort.

“It just might,” Gansey said, his voice thoughtful, and his thumb scraping at his bottom lip. “I’ll go ask St. Clair. In the meantime, Adam, are we alright with the plan? Because, we already packed up your stuff, and I have a lodge we could stay at a few miles near Richmond.”

Adam’s first impulse was to scoff, because of _course_ Gansey was rich enough to have a lodge they could all stay at on a whim, but he ignored that impulse. Instead, he looked at Ronan and the intense look in those blue eyes and said, “Yeah, I could work with that.”


	9. i don’t know what i’m fighting for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then Ronan was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has gotten _so_ behind schedule. I'm so sorry, about that guys, but I promise it'll be worth it!
> 
> Content warning: alcohol mentions and some vomiting

**RONAN**

The window seat inside the lodge was preoccupied, as were the thoughts of the person occupying it. With the curtains pulled back, the sun shone through the lines of clouds littering the gradient skyline, through the desperate claws of the leafless trees of winter, through the shadows of his eyelashes.

If Ronan blinked even a little, he was sure to feel the sting behind his eyelids and see the afterimages of light in the center of his pupils. It was starting to hurt, but he didn’t dare look away. He feared what may come to him in the darkness, once the sun gets blocked and the afterimages recede. He feared what may come to him in his dreams, once he felt the lull of unconsciousness work its magic on him.

So he stared, and stared, and stared.

There was a shuffling sound of something like clothing behind him, then a gentle hand by his shoulder. He paid it no mind.

“Lynch,” said Gansey, his voice sounding a little dry, like they’ve been here for hours without speaking or moving, but Ronan didn’t remember sitting here for hours. In fact, he barely felt any fatigue, barely felt the heaviness to his eyelids. Time around him was as slow as molasses, dream-like in its movement.

Now he began to doubt the source of Gansey’s voice, if it really was Gansey to begin with, or if he’s been dreaming the whole time, or if he wasn’t really sitting in the window seat of the lodge they’d moved into for the winter season, and that he might actually be asleep in the warehouse in DC.

The maybe-not-Gansey sighed at his silence, “Come on, let’s get some sleep. You need to rest up to get better.” The mother-hen tone of his voice and this exact conversation was so much like a broken record that Ronan felt like he’s heard it a thousand times.

Considering those factors, it was all the more frustrating to determine if this really was just a dream, a memory, or an actual event happening to him, so Ronan didn’t move, or speak, or even blink. He just stared, and stared, and stared at the sun and breathed a calming breath. He showed no recognition to this possible delusion.

Gansey sighed again, but this was forcibly silent and attracted part of Ronan’s attention. Gansey usually only did that when he had an audience. Now Ronan was doubting the credibility of his own sanity. Did he not know Gansey well enough?

“Look, Ronan,” maybe-not-Gansey started, “If you’re worried about Adam, don’t be. It’s only been a week, and Isabel said that it took Sam months before he showed up again. You should really just sleep it off.”

Gansey made it sound so easy, to be not worried about Adam, who’d recently been nothing but Ronan’s beacon of hope, his reason to get up and smile in the morning; who’d recently been injected with the meningitis and set loose on the closed area of their part of the wood; who’d recently been turned into a wolf and it was all Ronan’s fault.

And Ronan didn’t want to sleep, or face his subconscious. He didn’t want to see those elegant hands, glance at those sunken eyes, or feel the warmth of tan skin paled by the city. He didn’t want to fall asleep to nothing, and dream about something, but only wake up to nothing again.

So Ronan tried to stay solid in his decision and stared out of the window, but soon his eyelids grew heavy, and he could not manage much of this any longer. He sighed, and turned his eyes towards the presence that was undoubtedly Gansey. The afterimages of the glare of the sun managed to erase most of Gansey’s tired features from his vision, but Ronan could close his eyes and see the concern in those hazel eyes that he’s known for years.

His stomach grumbled, but he paid it no mind as he let Gansey pull him back to his appointed bedroom like he used to, when they still lived in Monmouth, and Ronan was still having nightmares that couldn’t manage to keep him awake until sunrise.

On his way back into unconsciousness, a headache bloomed beautifully beneath his brows but was ignored, as so many beautiful things were. Ronan was being coaxed, slowly, into the dream realm, and he began to wonder, finally if he only wanted Adam so that he could keep his distance from the past that kept running towards him, or if Ronan wanted Adam because they were the same that way. Their secrets and wretched memories from the town they grew up in, both too caught up in the moment to get what they wanted.

Sleep clutched Ronan with their clawing fingers like the branches of the winter trees and the sunlight, and they let go like a gust of winter air.

 

The fevers came in that morning, with a ferocity that rivaled even Ronan’s own beasts.

The night before, it wasn’t as bad. Ronan’s pain tolerance drew away some of the bite, and a few pills had it completely sedated. But when he rolled over in bed to those sensations the next morning, he couldn’t help but idly wonder if it was a manifestation of his longing, if being away from Adam for too long was going to hurt him as much as it could. He wondered if this could be classified as a kind of withdrawal.

The pinching between where the furrow of his brow formed was a cluster of strings inside the cotton of his head, pulling at the roots of his teeth, pulling behind his eye sockets.

The door squeaked open, with Noah bounding in with his socked feet and Wonder Woman printed boxers. Ronan blinked languidly at him, feeling the warmth of his forehead with the back of his palm.

Noah bounded forward, grabbing the phone on Ronan’s bedside table and turning off the alarm. Ronan didn’t notice its ringing until that one swift motion.

Wordlessly, as most of the moments with Noah were wordless, Noah brought his cold fingers to Ronan’s forehead, flinching back and mouthing a curse when his cold fingers touched the searing warmth coming from Ronan’s skin. Ronan wondered if Noah had just mouthed the curse, or if he spoke and Ronan just didn’t hear the sound of it.

Noah retreated out into the hall, leaving the door open.

His own life was an open door, he thought to himself. And everyone that entered the room left eventually.

His mind flashed to the smell of death, the sticky red of the BMW’s back tire, his father’s head cracked open like the eggs his mother had cracked against a bowl. His mind flashed to the smell of mist in the forest, the taste of vomit sitting horribly in the back of his throat, the sting of tears in his eyes like when he’d punched his brother that first time after the funeral.

Ronan wanted to forget.

He was never going to forget.

The bed tipped, and there was a glass to his lips, cold and wet, which was also tipped. Ronan opened his mouth, not wanting the cold to pour onto him. Noah came into his vision from the darkness in his eyes, pale and worried. The water tasted like medicine.

Ronan coughed a little, pushing at Noah’s hand. Noah recoiled and said, “I’ll go get you your breakfast. Lie down and rest.”

Ronan didn’t need to be told twice, but didn’t protest about breakfast. It wasn’t like he could get up or protest anyway. With a frown, he watched as Noah went out again, shutting the door behind him this time.

And then Ronan was alone.

**BLUE**

Blue was left to Ronan duty on New Year’s Eve, while the boys were out pretending not to buy alcohol and marshmallows for the celebration that evening.

While she read over whatever Gansey had written into his work-in-progress novel on the loveseat by the fireplace, Ronan was reclined in the sofa next to her, his arm shielding his eyes from her vision. The steady movement of his chest while he breathed reminded her of the mountains around Henrietta, a postcard view that looked so alive that she couldn’t help but stare.

Ronan was rarely this vulnerable around her anymore, around any of them, really. Not since he injected Adam with the meningitis and set him out into the woods.

If Blue were honest with herself, she would say that she was worried, because no matter how much Ronan puffed up his chest and furrowed his brow in defiance against the care that his friends provided him with, it never changed the fact that he’s been coughing up a storm lately, that the bin by his bedside had begun to fill with bloodied tissues.

If she were honest, she would say that she’s been looking into all the little things that could be the cause of this sudden illness.

Two weeks ago, she’d suggested a trip to the clinic. Five days from then, they went to the clinic and brought him back with medicine for seasonal allergies.  That night, she pushed all of Noah’s buttons to get him to teach her how to make chicken noodle soup. A week ago, Ronan began coughing harder, ate less and slept more. Four days ago, Blue brought in a box of tissue paper and put it on Ronan’s bedside table.

Blue was almost never honest with herself, but that didn’t mean she was going to lie for her reputation’s sake. She was not that kind of person.

“Maggot, stop staring,” Ronan’s dry throat croaked.

Blue snapped out of her reverie and began lying to herself again. She snorted, going back to reading. “Don’t be so full of yourself, Lynch.”

There was a moment where he tried to hum noncommittally but it resulted in a coughing fit that made Blue stand in wary attention. She set the laptop down on the carpet and grabbed the bottle of water from where it stood on the floor next to Ronan’s head, helping Ronan sit up so that he could cough it all out into his palm.

Blue never valued honesty like everyone else in this household, but she valued the truth, and she needed to tell herself that it was true that Ronan was a dickhead who could mouth off about not wanting help, but she was going to help anyway.

Behind her, the fire crackled, and a piece of wood slid of the precarious pile it was in.

There was a moment of silence as Ronan caught a cough into his mouth and swallowed it down with the next with a fierce look in his eyes. Under the circles that Blue drew onto his back, muscles tensed and under Blue’s watchful and weary eyes, walls were brought up in defense.

Blue tried to hold her temper.

“You should bathe before evening,” she said, her voice stretched out thin, and her fingers shaking a bit as she handed him his bottle of water.

He looked up at Blue with as much disdain as Blue let him give, before she added, “The idiots are getting alcohol right now, and I’ll be taking pictures of your drunk asses. I want y’all to look good in them.”

 

Ronan was taking too long inside the bathroom, and Blue wasn’t used to sitting by herself inside the huge lodge in the middle of the woods, so she thought to herself that Ronan wouldn’t mind if she did what she used to do back in Minnesota.

She knocked on the bathroom door and said, “I’m coming in whether or not you’re decent” before opening the door, stepping in, and closing the door behind her.

Ronan sat inside the tub, his nose above the water, and his eyes closed. He showed no sign of recognition as she stood by the door, and she didn’t mind.

Unceremoniously, she sat down the closed lid of the toilet seat and propped her feet up by the tiled wall.

Ronan lifted his chin above the water to say, “Did you fucking miss me already? Hasn’t even been thirty minutes.”

Blue scoffed dismissively, “I was making sure you weren’t drowning in the tub. You’re welcome.”

“Thanks, but lies don’t really suit you. The fuck you want, maggot?”

Blue wiggled her toes at the direction of Ronan’s head, taking note of the matte blue and black nail polish on each toe. She’d done it about a month ago, with a little help from Noah’s cold fingers and cooler breaths, and it still looked new. Her fingernails have long moved on from blue and black, but her toes looked pretty okay.

Saying that Ronan kind of reminded her of her toenails would have been cliché and inappropriate, which was good because she was only thinking it to herself. It was like this: Ronan stayed his path long enough that it would frustrate her that she’s moved onto another path. Had she been moving too fast, or had Ronan been lagging behind all along?

She returned her gaze to Ronan’s, watched as he dipped his chin back into the water. He looked like a shark with eyebrows, and the mental image almost made her laugh.

“Want me to wash what’s left of your hair like old times?” she asked instead of replying.

Ronan lifted his head, snorted, and said, “Only the hair you can reach.”

She grinned and put her feet down, automatically reaching for the shampoo bottle they all shared from across the tub. “Better get comfortable in the tub then, and keep your eyes closed this time. I don’t want you bitching to me about that again.”

He snorted at that, “Sargent, we all know that the pain is the _best_ part of shampoo.”

Blue managed to roll her eyes at that, and was going to tell him that that wasn’t what he’d said the last time before the door burst open behind them, startling them both out of the conversation. She had squeezed too much shampoo in her palm, and she grimaced at it, wondering if she should open the whole thing to scrap it off, or just scrape it off on the lid.

“What on earth are you two doing?” asked Gansey, frowning at the scene. He looked windswept, and his nose and cheeks were red with the cold from outside. She thought that it made him look washed out. He looked simultaneously old and weary, and youthful and alive.

Blue laughed at his question and responded with her own, “What do you think?” She walked toward him and pecked him on the cheek before adding, “Now get out, we’re bonding. You can do Noah’s hair in the upstairs bathroom.”

**GANSEY**

It was 11:40 in the evening when Noah started lighting the Roman candles that Gansey had managed to swap for whatever noisy firework that Noah shoved into the shopping basket. When Noah looked through their purchases earlier, Gansey couldn’t help but laugh at the look of utter betrayal that crossed Noah’s face.

The inside of his head was just as peaceful as the evening around him, with the ambience of crickets and soft winter wind. In the distance, he could hear the sound of fireworks, nothing but soft taps to his ears.

Beside him, Blue laid her head on his shoulder, talking to Ronan about what was going on in Gansey’s novel-in-progress, waving around her s’more  with such enthusiasm that Gansey had to snatch it from her before it dropped on the floor of their front porch. She protested, swatting at his leg, but went to get another marshmallow to hold over the fire that they’d set up on the grill.

On the couch they dragged out, in front of him, sat Ronan Lynch, with a blanket around his shoulders, a bottle of beer sweating on his leather bands where he held it by the neck, and a small smile on his face as they all watched Noah dejectedly point the candle upwards.

He’s never looked more content in weeks, and it brings Gansey great joy to think this. Ronan deserved to be content, what with the stress of Adam’s shifting, his guilt about Adam’s business, and his sudden illness.

“Really, Dick?” complained Noah, lights and smoke making his shockingly-light blond hair look almost white. His face was dull under the colors, and Gansey almost let his face falter into an open-mouthed smile. “You thought this is a better exchange for fire fountains? I can’t believe I almost considered you to be cool, dude.”

Blue elbowed him by the ribs not-so lightly but Gansey was used to it. “You gonna take that smack talk?” This was her way of joking, pretending to set up macho fights between the boys.

Gansey made an unattractive sound that made Ronan’s small smile morph into a grin. Blue giggled and snorted when he started poking her where he knew she was ticklish.

“Stop, okay, jeez,” Blue breathed out, pushing away at his fingers.

“Get a room!” shouted Noah through the smoke, holding an unlit Roman candle to the tip of the lit one in his other hand.

Gansey hugged Blue closer to him and waved his middle finger a little flimsily at Noah’s direction. This time, Ronan let out a breath that sounded like a laugh. It came with the edge of an insult that Gansey had grown fond of.

“Even when you flip someone off, it comes out pretty weak,” observed Blue. Gansey was not used to the constructs of being playfully rude to his friends, much less anyone else. In silent, childish retaliation, he moved to poke her side one last time, with his middle finger. Blue twisted away.

“Your _face_ is pretty weak,” he retorted.

Ronan clears his throat with an aborted statement of, “The last word is a lie.”

Gansey gave him a betrayed look, but it wasn’t serious. Blue heard, but pretended not to.

Noah ran back to the porch when he’d grown too bored with playing with Roman candles all by his lonesome. When he reached for a marshmallow, Blue smacked his hand away. There was a split second where Noah looked genuinely hurt before the mock pouting started.

“You touched fireworks, Noah. You’re not eating with your hands until you wash up,” explained Gansey.

Noah plopped down beside Ronan, still pouting. He gave Ronan a pitiful look and said, “Feed me marshmallows, Ronan.”

Ronan, surprisingly, put down his beer and reached for the bag next to him immediately and held a mallow up. Noah’s face brightened, and he was about to say something before Ronan shoved the mallow into his own mouth.

Gansey laughed softly at Noah’s betrayed squawk of protest and Ronan’s casually smug look as he chewed on the sweets.

He hadn’t noticed when Blue walked off, but they were all blinded by a flash, and the sound of paper coming out of the Polaroid that Gansey owned. Blue waved the paper around and kept it her shadow, away from the light of the fire.

She grinned when the picture showed and looked at Ronan, “I told you I’d be taking pictures.”

 

It was 11:50 when Gansey retrieved their jackets, grabbed a lighter, the Roman candles, and a large, lidless jar, before they all set out into the woods. He checked the temperature by the side of the house first, and knew that it wasn’t enough to trigger Ronan’s shift.

They wandered around the lit trail that led back to the lodge before they reached a clearing. The night proved to make the wood look creepy, but they were all used to this. Gansey had glimpses once, of how life as a wolf was. He remembered pictures of Boundary Wood, back in Minnesota, of stags drinking by the lake, a nest of rabbits in the ground.

It was enough to make him wish he could trigger the shift back, but his three years had only started, and he had twelve more until he needed to again.

When Blue started to complain about it being dark in the clearing, Gansey shook himself out of his thoughts and said, “Well, try to look up.”

Simultaneously, they looked up, and saw the branches becoming cracks to the mural that was the starry night sky. Though they were only a few minutes away from Richmond, the stars still looked breathtakingly bright against the vast dark blue dome. The moon was half-formed, smiling down at them.

There was a moment where they all just blew puffs of breath up into the space hanging between them. The sounds of the forest were soothing to Gansey, as soothing as Blue’s warm hand by his arm was.

He checked his watch.

11:58. 11:59.

Softly, Gansey began counting down, Noah mouthing the numbers with him. Blue’s hand snaked around his waist. He put the box of Roman candles on the floor and started setting up. He handed them each one Roman candle, two for Ronan, and it was a silent agreement that it was meant for Adam.

_Forty-two, forty-one, forty_

Gansey crouched down and poured the rest of the Roman candles into the large jar, wicks pointing up at the sky. He patted his hands down on his pants to clean both his palms and his pants.

When he looked around, he noticed that there was a furrow between Ronan’s brows as he looked up into the night sky, too focused on something else to count down with them. Gansey thought he looked odd.

_Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three_

Blue tugged him closer, so Gansey put his arm around her shoulders. Their counting was getting louder, gaining volume as they got closer and closer to zero.

Gansey waved his hand forward, beckoning for Noah, but their counting didn’t stop. Noah raised a brow, and then Gansey tossed the lighter at him. It landed on the ground with a small thud, and Noah picked it up then smiled.

Gansey watched puffs of their breath go up into the sky and realized what had looked odd with Ronan.

He wasn’t breathing.

_Seven, six, five_

Gansey reached forward to tap his shoulder and at the same time, Noah bounded a little ways away, with the jar of Roman candle. He tried to make the lighter work as soon as the jar was balanced, the light flickering by is fingers.

_Four, three, two—_

Ronan coughed, then retched.

The lighter made contact to one of the wicks and hissed to life, then made all the other wicks hiss to life.

 _Ssssssss_ , the candles hissed, and Gansey bounded towards Ronan at the same time everyone else did.

 _One_.

It was 12:00, the first hour of the year, when they sent balls of fire up into the clearing, letting them join the lights tacked up on the dome of the sky above them, when they all counted this as their seventh New Year away from Henrietta.

It was 12:00, the first hour of the New Year, when Ronan started throwing up blood in the middle of the forest, when everything came crashing down, and when the howling started in the far distance.


	10. we have the curtains drawn and closed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He remembered Gansey’s worry for his wellbeing, Blue’s anger at Kavinsky and at him for choosing to shift in such a place, and Noah’s silent and welcome companionship when Ronan had told him about it over dinner one night.
> 
> That was about five years ago, Ronan thought with a jolt. A new year had passed while he was knocked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: implied sexual assault, retching, blood, and other stuff i might need to remember, comment them maybe?

**BLUE**

Ronan looked small on his queen-sized bed, and his being the tallest person in the house made Blue’s stomach clench with what was akin to worry and fear for him.

His chest heaved when he took deep breaths; his sheets were pulled all the way up to his chin so that the only things she could see were his face and arms, both extremely pale. There was a furrow at his brow that Blue wanted to reach out to wipe it away, and the grimace of pain was almost enough to fool her into thinking that he was conscious.

Blue resisted the urge to touch him, if only to give Ronan the space he would have wanted if he were awake instead of bedridden.

Gansey was on his phone in the hall, pacing to and fro, worrying his bottom lip. From her perch on the bed, Blue thought that if he didn’t stop doing it, he’ll eventually scrape his lip off entirely, possibly, he was going to run a hole into the floorboards with his bare feet with the rate at which he was pacing too.

So she shot up from her seat by the edge of Ronan’s bed, caught up to him, snatched at the hand that he’d been worrying his lip with. She nodded for him to keep doing what he was doing on the phone when he jolted to a stop an aimed his attention at the warmth of her fingers.

Silently, Blue stood there, shifting her weight from time to time. Gansey kept speaking into his phone, not bothering to shield Blue from the one-sided conversation. She didn’t need to ask who it was and why Gansey was calling, because there were only a total of three people that Gansey would contact during emergencies, as there were limited reasons on why he called each person. These contacts included Helen Gansey, Grace Brisbane, and Cole St. Clair.

Helen was the person that Richard Gansey III contacted whenever he needed to settle issues with money and property. Even though Helen didn’t know why he disappeared from Henrietta years ago, she didn’t find it odd. Blue had found out that it was because the younger Gansey sibling had the tendency to move places, and his parents had the tendency not to care. As siblings, Helen and Richard only ever really asked each other favors, but Blue knew that they cared for each other.

Grace and Cole, on the other hand, were pack-exclusive contacts.

Though usually he was an emergency contact, Cole St. Clair proved to have more free time than his fame led everyone else to believe. He sent everyone in his phonebook all the demos of his songs before they were ever out. Cole was only ever contacted whenever they needed shifting advice and were trying to keep it a secret from the whole pack.

At the moment, Adam was a secret between everyone in the warehouse, Cole St. Clair, and Kavinsky. And they needed it to stay that way for now.

Grace, in place of her other half, Sam, was only ever contacted whenever Cole wasn’t immediately available, or if they needed shifting advice, or if they wanted to check up on the pack back in Minnesota.

Ronan’s well-being was important, as it had been important when they were back in Minnesota, so Blue was sure that it was Grace on the phone with Gansey.

Gansey hummed at what was said to him, nodding though Grace couldn’t see him nodding. Blue played with his fingers to calm his anxiety a bit, watching how some of the tension trickled out of his shoulders as she caressed his knuckles.

“Yes, yes, okay,” he muttered in a rare rush. Gansey was usually more deliberate and calmer than this. His fingers closed in on Blue’s, and she could feel the sweat collecting under his palm. “I’ll go ask him when he wakes. Thank you again, ma’am. I apologize if we’ve inconvenienced you. I’ll text if anything comes up, then... Okay.”

He didn’t say goodbye when he hung up, and there was a worried frown adorning his features, the one that made him look older than he was.

Blue didn’t have to ask how it went, because the look on his face already showed how bad it was. She asked in a small voice, “What did she say about Ronan, then?”

Gansey ran a hand through his face, his voice going softer as they stepped into Ronan’s room. “It’s still just a hypothesis, but we need to trigger his shifting if Grace is right.”

Shifting was the body’s reaction to the toxins present in the wolf saliva, Cole had told her once. Triggering the shift was just its way of coping with the illness that wanted to kill them. At the moment, Ronan looked about half-dead, and that didn’t bode well.

_What was happening?_

Blue knew the answer to that as she stared down at her bare feet, frowning as her eyes glanced over her toenails. With a frown, she remembered her comparison.

Ronan was lagging behind all of them, but she was unsure if it was something about his shifting or about him in general, or if it was about his memories. But he was lagging behind, and somehow, the past had caught up to him, somehow shifting was a terrifying thing again.

**RONAN**

Ronan dreamt like an all-terrain jeep travelling on rocky forest fields, where the trees were his memories and the rocks were his fantasies. He was spinning out of control. Everything was always spinning out of control. He was crashing into trees, and crushing rocks, and rolling out of the vehicle, and it was like it was never going to stop.

He rolled out of the vehicle and waited for the ground to scrape his elbows and for the rocks to hit his head and for his blood to seep out of his cracked head, but the snowy forest floor didn’t hit him.

Instead, he found himself bracing for the kick of a high, or the buzz of alcohol, with his back sweating in a vehicle he hadn’t sat inside for a long time, with a person he doesn’t want to see for even longer.

Kavinsky leaned over the gear shift to touch his knee, while Ronan rattled inside his brain and struggled out of his body. Fingernails did not touch his inner thigh, but the claws of a wolf did. Kavinsky—no, the wolf— Ronan wasn’t sure if either were different. Human lips touched his ear but the sound that came from his throat was a wolf’s growl.

And in the growl, Ronan could not hear anything else but the rush of his blood and, “ _You can push me away, but you won’t forget me_.”

Ronan finally took control of his body and his pent up aggression, and lashed out. He pushed Kavinsky away with a shout, and his hand came to contact to a bare shoulder that was not a bare shoulder but a bare hipbone, and the hipbone was not Kavinsky’s but Adam’s.

Ronan leaned in, towards Adam’s neck, blinking languidly with his hooded eyes, laying down open-mouthed kisses like the maps in Monmouth back in Henrietta. His teeth scraped the collarbone and sighed. His eyes glanced up to Adam’s intense blue eyes and saw the reflection of a wolf, and a bloodied shoulder.

Ronan recoiled, and then they were inside the warehouse. In front of him was Kavinsky, grinning, smirking, still present because Ronan will never forget him. “ _You won’t forget me,_ ” he grinned, wider and sharper, and it could almost cut Ronan, but he was standing outside the door like the fae in his mother’s old bedtime stories, waiting to be invited in.

Sobs came up behind him, silent with the sound of pain.

Ronan turned and saw. Adam clutched his bloodied shoulder and shook and shivered. He was shifting. Ronan could not look, but he looked. Adam’s eyes were angry, but not at him. Adam’s eyes were accusatory, but it was not aimed at him.

Ronan wanted to know.

“ _Stop crying,_ ” Adam said, and it was a whisper and a promise. Ronan was not crying, but he could see the tears flood his vision. “ _I will never hate you_.”

Ronan walked towards him.

“ _Snap out of it!_ ” Blue shouted, but it had seemed so far away.

Ronan crouched, and then the cement of the warehouse’s first floor was not cement, but the forest floor outside the lodge. Twigs dug into his knees and it was so real, so real that he could almost feel the warmth when he wrapped his arms around Adam’s shoulders, and one of his hands was a syringe.

He dropped it. Arms came around his waist, and he was pulled in.

“ _Wake up, Ronan!_ ”

Ronan sucked in a huge breath, and coughed, shooting out of the bed like a comet. Adrenaline rushed within him, but not enough to trigger a shift, nowadays, nothing was ever enough to trigger a shift. He blinked and blinked and blinked, and there were tears and stars flooding his vision.

He looked at his hands, shaky and glistening with cold sweat. He looked at his bed, bloodied and damp but in the blink of an eye, clean. His eyes were playing tricks on him. He looked at Blue, worried and confused. She had snapped him out of his dreams. Ronan heaved a breath loaded with the gratitude he could not say with the voice he lost.

Adam was still a wolf.

The disappointment was palpable inside his chest, heavy and daunting, like carrying the weight of the world, and the weight of Adam’s.

“Ronan,” Gansey called out from the seat across the room. Ronan looked at him, found his disheveled form in the dim light of his dusty room. He looked like he hasn’t been sleeping, which wasn’t unusual. But what was unusual was that Blue also looked like she hasn’t been sleeping either.

“You were dreaming,” said Gansey, and Ronan understood what he had said, knew the words had fallen out of Gansey’s mouth in the trickle of his old Virginian accent, but Ronan was too busy trying to figure out how he had ended up in his bed when the last memory he had of consciousness was in the middle of the forest, that was nothing like Boundary Wood but enough to make him nostalgic.

“I’d like to know the finer details of that dream as well as the next person,” Blue said not-harshly in response to Gansey’s statement. Her hand was unnervingly close to where Ronan didn’t want to be touched, which was anywhere. Ronan leaned away from her, as subtly as he could. She glanced at Ronan, apparently his subtlety was all for naught, but instead of saying anything about it she gave Gansey a look.

He watched an exchange go on in their eyes and expressions, but his mind was too preoccupied to figure it out if he was mentioned in the discussion.

Gansey sighed, which meant that Blue had won, though they weren’t really arguing. It was not so unusual that Gansey would draw from an argument, especially if it was with Blue. Blue was rarely wrong when she argued with Gansey.

With a rare frown, Gansey asked Ronan, “When was the last time you shifted?”

Ronan was not expecting to be interrogated so soon after becoming conscious. His brain struggled with a response, and his throat hurt to speak. He tried to remember when was the last time he shifted, and remembered the feeling of the soil under his boots, the sting of his chest as he breathed in and out, the unfamiliar number on his cracked phone screen.

 

It was six hours into the evening, and Boundary Wood held the promises of mist, prey, and the unbearable lack of howling. Tom Culpeper, though he had banished himself from Mercy Falls, held onto that iron grip that had given him access to chasing out the wolves in the forest.

It was Christmas Eve, and it was all Ronan could do to not slam into his car and drive back to Henrietta, to drive on the vicious road of Singer’s Falls, brave the driveway of The Barns to kiss his mother on the cheek, to embrace his little brother, maybe even to apologize to his older brother.

He had taken a look down at his reflection on the screen of his phone, hating himself for anticipating something, anything. He knew that Kavinsky ought to have called him by then, because Kavinsky had promised him years before.

“On Christmas Eve, three years from now, if I don’t call you, then you can assume I’m dead in a ditch, or fucking someone else,” Kavinsky had told him the day he decided to run away from the parking lot of the highway diner where he disappeared from the group.

Gansey and the others didn’t know this was going to happen then, so Ronan sent Gansey a text, just the coordinates he’d looked up on his GPS before he decided to park on the shoulder of the empty road. It was a little less than thirty minutes from Mercy Falls, but already neck-deep into Boundary Wood. Gansey would have to figure it out for himself, in the dark and with the camouflage of Ronan’s black BMW.

Again, Ronan stared at the cracked phone screen in a mix of hope that Kavinsky would call and anticipation of midnight passing and Kavinsky not calling that made his bones ache and his beast want to howl into the cold winter air. His phone rang, and he let it ring. His hands were shaking and so was the text on the screen.

It was a roaming call, his phone informed him. It clicked into voicemail after letting out a few more gut-wrenching rings.

“ _Lynch,_ ” came Kavinsky’s familiar voice, but its tone was unfamiliar and something that raised Ronan’s walls in underlying weariness. His muffled voice was muttering into the speakers, which meant that he was bent over it.  It was soft.

The images inside Ronan’s head were so crisp, but he still had a hard time imagining which situation was truer than the other. Was Kavinsky over him or was he not over Kavinsky?  Could Kavinsky have bought himself shelter now or could he have lived off of the streets like he used to back in Henrietta? Was he bent over his own phone on the couch or did he have to use meager change for a call to Ronan’s phone, straining to lean back inside a smelly phone booth?

“ _I’m in DC,_ ” Kavinsky said after a tense moment, and in all honesty, Ronan found that he didn’t want to know where Kavinsky was. Why was he telling Ronan this?

“ _Merry Christmas, you Catholic piece of shit. Hope Santa gave you coal this year, or shall I say Cole, if you catch my flow._ ” There was a grin in his voice, but Ronan didn’t laugh. Neither did Kavinsky, because this was voicemail and it was late. Ronan couldn’t bear to not hate himself for thinking it, but Kavinsky sounded so desperate and melancholic at that very moment.

He gritted his teeth, told himself not to believe any of it, and listened. “ _God shit damn, it’s colder than a witch’s tit here. I could probably use a few more layers to throw off both the cops and animal control…”_ There was a pause, before, “ _Look man, in a show of Christmas miracle, I gotta say… I really just miss you. People here are fucking lame_.”

Ronan stared, unbelieving at his phone. Kavinsky often lied, and Ronan would always know. There weren’t feelings involved in their relationship, Ronan knew, but that was what he told himself when he was too high to worry about Kavinsky’s touches and kisses and bites.

His skin burned, and it was almost like a reminder. The scrape of nails ghosted over his skin; the sharp grin on Kavinsky’s face when Ronan told him no for the first time; the sick twist in his gut that told him that his body would always react differently from what he felt; it was all a reminder that he had let Kavinsky use him one too many times and now that he knew that it was wrong, he would want not to do it again.

With a grimace, he dropped his phone into the car without listening to the whole call, and stripped down behind his car. He piled his clothes on top of the hood and ran into the forest, away from the car, from his memories, from the lies he couldn’t pinpoint as lies.

 

He was gone for three days after that, a different species in unwelcome territory. Sam had told the whole pack to try and avoid shifting near Boundary Wood, but Ronan never was used to following rules that were spoken. He remembered Gansey’s worry for his wellbeing, Blue’s anger at Kavinsky and at him for choosing to shift in such a place, and Noah’s silent and welcome companionship when Ronan had told him about it over dinner one night.

That was about five years ago, Ronan thought with a jolt. A new year had passed while he was knocked out.

When he looked again, at Gansey and Blue, they were frowning, both casting looks of worry at each other and at Ronan. He didn’t have enough energy to stop them.

**NOAH**

The sky was so vibrant and saturated that it was almost azure in color when he drove back to the lodge from the Laundromat, and it hurt Noah’s head to look at, especially in direct contrast of the black crack-like branches of the trees around him.

After midnight, after Gansey and Noah helped carry Ronan back to the lodge, Blue had told Noah to go get the laundry done. Gansey had let him drive the Pig, if only to kick him out of the lodge sooner rather than later. Apparently, Noah had shown too much panic, too much stiff, silent anxiety, too much of Gansey. None of them could sleep, but some of them had to be productive to make it feel like they were in control. Noah took up the task.

Underneath the thin, worn soles of his sneakers, Noah could feel the twigs crack, the soggy dead leaves squelch in small puddles from the melting ice. He jacked the keys from the ignition and shoved the door close, walking around to grab the heavy backpack from the trunk.

Immediately, Noah sunk a little in the mud, but he paid it no mind as he locked the trunk and trudged away towards where the lodge was. They parked the Pig a little ways away from the lodge, under Blue’s suggestion that it would get them more exercise. Noah didn’t complain, but that was because Ronan parked his BMW next to the house and Noah always offered to be in charge of the radio for an excuse.

A smoke-like haze floated in front of him as he breathed, blocking his vision as he walked past each cloud, relishing in the silence, save for the wet sucking sound from his shoes. His cheeks heated with the bite of the cold, stinging air, seeping into his bones, taking hold of him.

His mind flashed back, involuntarily.

 _There was a_ thud _, louder than the hiss of the small balls of fire going up from the Roman candles, a_ thud _louder in the middle of the woods with only crickets to attest to its sound, the howling was almost silent, too distant to his ears._

_The balls of fire lit the forest around him, and he fell forward, jogging up to Ronan to try and catch him before he fell to the floor. His nose smelled smoke, and mist, and blood—_

No, Noah thought as he shook his head.

His thoughts were contradictory, like two loud people debating from each side of an empty room. Ronan was fine; he was in bed back in the lodge. Ronan wasn’t fine; he collapsed in a pool of his own puked up blood. Noah had to believe it wasn’t a big deal. Noah knew it was a big deal.

This had happened to Grace Brisbane. She had told him of the tale, once when she got back from Duluth for the summer, how she had been unable to trigger the shift through the cure for so long that she began getting fevers and coughing up blood.

How couldn’t he see it coming? Why didn’t he observe more carefully? How could Noah think they were safe now that they got some sort of temporary cure?

The wolf was killing them all, and the fever wouldn’t be able to stop that.

With a start, he stopped walking, his sneakers squelching a few leaves before he completely came to a stop. He felt the ghost aches in his knees, felt the weight of the backpack as if he were carrying all of their burdens.

There was a rustle in the bushes.

Noah broke out of his thoughts and looked around. There was no one for miles of the lodge, Gansey had ensured that before he even brought the idea up to the whole group, before they even met Adam. This was for the sake of whoever would eventually shift (Ronan), and whoever would be unfortunate enough to be bitten.

The rustling came again, but this time with the sound of mud parting for something heavier than an animal. And before, Noah could completely wave it off as some woodland creature (though he should have taken hibernation into consideration), then came the sound of a groan.

He couldn’t have moved any faster than that without slipping and falling, with the soles of his sneakers digging into the mud. “Is anyone there?” he called out, shuffling his backpack around to try to grab some articles of clothing from the pile. There was a chance it could have been Adam, or some other wolf from near Richmond, or Henrietta for that matter.

He saw sandy-blond hair, and saw a shivering form, and saw knobs going down a spine as the person bent over themselves. Noah approached him and muttered to himself, “No, this is too early.” But was it, really? Wasn’t Adam cured?

“Hello?”

No response.

A jolt went through the person’s spine, as if realizing just then that Noah had spoken. The person turned, and then Noah said, “Adam?”

Adam looked at him, his eyes glazed over and confused, but he didn’t speak. Noah knew that he couldn’t, because the pain would cause you to drool and retch, and stretch you out too thin or too thick around the edges. Adam’s throat would have been hurting too much for it to function.

Noah breathed in, and out, and reeled in his panic. With a convincingly calm voice, he said, “Nod once if you think you need to shift again, twice if I can go ahead and touch you so that I can give you these clothes.”

Adam took a moment to decide, but he nodded twice, hands lifting from the mud to reach for whatever Noah gave him to wear against the cold. His fingers were trembling, but that only made Noah rush faster.

Noah set the bag down on the ground, shoved through most of the underwear. He gave Adam one of Gansey’s sweaters, and one of his own hand-me-down basketball shorts. Noah helped him up, letting Adam lean against a tree for support, helped him through the shorts without incident.

“Can you walk?” Noah asked, zipping up the bag and standing. Glancing at Adam, leaned against a tree, looking like he was trying too hard to forget something or like he was trying too hard to stay himself, Noah shrugged off his jacket and tossed it at Adam.

Adam caught it, jumpy and nervous. He looked at Noah and nodded, meaning that he could walk, yes.

Noah couldn’t wait to see the look on Blue’s face. He went out to fetch the laundry and brought back Adam and mud trails into the lodge.

This first day into the year was turning out to be quite something, he thought to himself, making sure that Adam would put on the jacket before helping him onto the trail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for not updating for so long? it's really difficult, trying to write and read and do school stuff simultaneously. i'm trying to monopolize my time without completely shrugging off this fic, i hope i haven't bored everyone off.


	11. i'm such a sorry sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monsters of memories, their brands a reminder that he was never going to be good enough, a bridge that dragged him back to Henrietta with every second he dwelt on them. From Henrietta dust to Henrietta dust; he couldn’t possibly destroy what made him, so he buried it with other soil.

**ADAM**

Adam, with not a single rude cell in his body, had no idea how to take someone for granted.

He thought that maybe it was because he’d worked in retail before, like shrugging off the help of the people behind the menial services wasn’t something he could do now, because he’d experienced part of the work. Lives and emotions were too big to ignore now that he knew.

He thought right.

With a sigh, he stood from his bed, paced the length of his room, and then chose to sit down again, clenching his fists around the clothes that Noah had given to him.

On the way out of the forest, Adam had taken careful notice of which parts of his body were wet with mud and shivering with the wind. He didn’t want to let (newly pressed and folded) borrowed clothes get too dirty so he pulled at his clothes constantly. When Noah had noticed him doing it, he told Adam not to bother, which made Adam bother even more because he noticed.

His anxiety did not lessen after he got into the warmth that the lodge offered, the searing pain of the shift was still too present and fresh in his mind, and his memories—the ones he buried so deeply into the caverns of his mind—were being unearthed and brought up. His mind was making him relive them, making him remember each and every detail; his father’s fist in a perpetual swing, his face in a perpetual cringe, his ear slowly ringing into disuse.

Shifting had brought everything back. Unearthed, his memories haunted him worse than his ghosts and it made him anxious.

They were memories that were to him as was Robert Parrish. Monsters of memories, their brands a reminder that he was never going to be good enough, a bridge that dragged him back to Henrietta with every second he dwelt on them. From Henrietta dust to Henrietta dust; he couldn’t possibly destroy what made him, so he buried it with other soil.

He tried his best to repress each memory after he collected himself.

After a shower and some food, Adam was a little less shaken than before. He heaved a sigh again.  The anxiety stuck true to him though, a constant and unwelcome companion in his lonesome. With the set of clothing in his hands, he tried to muster up the courage to get up and thank Noah.

Trying to calm himself, he looked around his room, fidgeting.

His own clothes were neatly folded inside drawers he only remembered seeing empty, he noticed. They were warm and smelled of familiar detergent, which meant that they were used. Adam didn’t mind the thought of the inhabitants of this lodge using his clothes when he wasn’t there to use it. It was oddly comforting, in fact. It smelled like Gansey’s sweaters, like the clothes he was holding onto at the moment, and surely like Blue’s dresses which meant that it also smelled like

— _Ronan_.

It was a slippery slope, thinking about his name. Once Adam started thinking about him, everything turned to come back to _him_ , to soft lips, intense eyes, and lines and lines and lines. This was a phenomenon that happened between meeting the stranger by the bar, the one who he’d taken home to fuck, and meeting Ronan, the man who accidentally got him into the shifting business and regretted it every following second. Adam had never met someone who’d cared so much before, not even his college friends had given him that kind of attention, those kinds of intense look, or those rounded edges.

Adam made a futile effort at resisting those thoughts. He had to go and thank Noah. To hell if Gansey or Blue were present to see his weird way of thanking people, to see how he fidgeted with the urge of returning favors, how he thought that one simple gesture had to have compensation. The feeling simmered under his skin, in his veins, making his hands shake and his breathing hitch.

He needed to balance things out—

No, he needed to stop being such a stuck-up was what he needed. This was old Henrietta Adam reacting to favors by way of paying them back. He needed to stop it, he told himself, but it wasn’t like he could just _stop_.

He stood again, but his feet were solid under his feet this time, so he stepped towards the door that led to the hall and swung it open.

Blue stood in the hall, looking idly into the door across Adam’s. She looked like her own fashion line, with her layered clothing and her DIY accessories, which was usually what she looked like. Adam found beauty in her sharpness, similar to Ronan’s but different in the way that she held herself.

Where Ronan was solid, she was soft, and it worked vice versa. Her hair was everywhere, but also held back by hairpins; her personality seeped out of every detail that Adam laid his eyes on. Ronan was opposite, with his shaved head and his simply rebellious wardrobe.

Adam found that maybe he liked Ronan more because of bias, or because Blue was with Gansey, or maybe because Blue seemed better to be a sister than to be someone he liked. Either way, he chose Ronan.

Briefly, Adam catalogued all the rooms on the second floor, rooms he’d checked before he was shifted into the other species.

The room nearest to the stairwell was the staircase to the attic, where Noah slept. There were two bathrooms in the hall, both across from each other, and then there was the master’s bedroom, where Blue and Gansey resided. Adam’s room was by the end of the hall, and across from him was

— _Ronan_.

He wondered how Ronan was, if Ronan was going to wake up surprised that Adam was not a wolf anymore, if Ronan was going to be happy to see him, if Ronan missed him. He wondered why Ronan hadn’t been outside of his room yet. Adam wondered if he should be worried.

“Adam,” Blue said, jolting out of her thoughts, or jolting Adam out of his. He hadn’t noticed who stopped staring at the door first. “How are you doing, so far?” she asked in a way that begged him, but didn’t, not to talk about how she had been staring at Ronan’s door.

Adam shrugged, his fingers clutching the clothes even tighter. He seemed very stable as a human right now but he’d been told first that in theory, a smidgen of adrenaline or a drop in temperature could send him into fits. He’d been told later that in theory, he was cured until the wolf came back to get him after a few years—fifteen or seven, he couldn't remember which. He was uncertain, still, of the facts that held onto the solidity of his current form.

Blue hummed, if only to fill the silence that Adam had provided her with. Adam stepped out of his room and said, “I have to give these back to Noah.” He held up the clothes and shrugged past her.

“Okay,” she responded softly, but didn’t move to follow him as he opened the door to the attic staircase by the other end of the hall.

The attic was cozy and dome-like, so unlike what Adam had thought it would look like. He knew that the door led to the attic when they’d arrived, but he didn’t check to see the room, too afraid that it would bring back memories of his room in St. Agnes.

The walls were littered with little things like Polaroid pictures that looked recent, and fairy lights that reached just past his knees. The mattress on the floor looked unlike Adam’s by sheer volume, the kind of mattress that the Adam from years ago did not buy because he thought he could bear the world with a constant back ache better than being comfortable and owning considerably less money.

It was not worth it, he’d told himself.

Really, Adam thought, what a fool he was back then.

Noah sat in the middle of the floor, fiddling with the tinny music coming from his phone. He was surrounded by five piles of folded articles of clothing. He looked so like an Aglionby student that it made Adam wonder how he never thought about it before.

He formed the words in his head, but he couldn’t make it sound like something he would say. The panic settled into his gut. Why was he even bothering? He should be worrying about his career at this point. How long had he been a wolf this time? Did winter really pass by already? Had his firm try to contact him at this point? Was he missing to the public like Ronan and the others were?

Where was Ronan?

He felt faint, felt breathless and melancholic and grieved. The damp underside of Adam’s foot made a squeak on the smooth wooden floorboards when he caught himself mid-fall, and that brought Noah out of his ministrations.

“Sorry,” Adam said, but he didn’t know if it was because he’d freaked out or if it was because he’d broken the silence or if it was because he doubted the security of their hospitality in the lodge. Gansey and the others had done nothing but help him since he’d gotten into this business.

— _Ronan_.

It took almost all of his willpower to bring his thoughts back around to what he was saying to Noah.  “I should have knocked. You could have been indecent in here.”

Noah snorted, dropping his phone onto the floor and stretching. It looked loose and tight simultaneously, and Adam’s head ached a little at trying to categorize it as something in between. Noah was a walking contradictory.

“You wouldn’t have seen anything anyway,” Noah piped up. “The most indecent anyone gets in this house is when they’re in a relationship, and I am still decidedly single. Knock when you go to Blue and Gansey’s though, please; I learned that the hard way.”

Unintentionally, a laugh ripped itself from Adam’s chest, but he caught it when it was just fresh out of his mouth. The sound it made was delighted but cut short, resulting in an awkward silence. Adam cleared his throat and held the clothes out to Noah.

“I just wanted to bring these to you,” Adam said. Correcting himself, he added, “I—thanks, also.”

Noah gave him a fond smile, which made Adam fidget. “There’s no need. If I hadn’t gotten you in clothes and in here, you’d die of hypothermia, and everyone in this household would have killed me if they found out.”

Adam didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

Noah looked at him, his eyes unnervingly brown and black at the same time that Adam’s head began hurting again. “There’s really no need to thank me,” Noah reiterated. “We just want you safe here.”

Adam thought about the last time he felt safety, with arms around his waist, hugging him from behind.

— _Ronan_.

“Have you seen him yet?” Noah asked, as if reading Adam’s thought process. When Adam didn’t respond, he added as if to clarify, “Ronan, I mean. He’s in his room.”

Adam shook his head, and was about to say something before the door to the attic opened. Adam looked behind him.

Gansey peered up at him, his hands settled on the door frame, with his glasses slightly crooked and his face twisted into something akin to panic. It was daunting, seeing someone like Gansey panic, like Adam should have been panicking too.

“Adam,” Gansey called out. “Are you doing okay?”

Adam wondered how Gansey could be polite in a situation where he was panicking. Adam nodded dumbly, before saying, “Are you?”

Gansey looked taken aback, but then shook his head as if to clear a thought or as an answer to Adam’s question. “Meeting in the living room in five minutes, you too, Noah!”

 

Adam fidgeted with his fingers; he felt lingering gazes on the back of his blue cardigan, through his gray shirt, and straight through his shoulder blades like a knife or a punch.

He felt uncomfortable sitting there on the couch, in his loose skin and looser clothes. He felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there, in the lodge, with Gansey, and Blue, and Noah. He felt like he should be thrown back into the forest. He felt like he should just go back to DC and forget ever being a wolf or ever meeting any of them. He felt like he didn’t belong or like he didn’t deserve anything, like Blue’s friendliness, or Noah’s understanding, or Gansey’s hospitality, or

— _Ronan_.

 _You’re such an ingrate_ , a voice shoved aside his thoughts of Ronan. It sounded horribly like Robert Parrish, but Adam was slightly unsure since he didn’t even remember what his father sounded like anymore. _You’ll never change, you ungrateful piece of—_

“Adam,” Gansey said once he’d entered the room with Blue. By way of his tone, it seemed like Adam had given him quite the start, despite the fact that he was the one that told Adam to come downstairs for the meeting with Noah. Anger rose in Adam’s throat like bile, acrid and bitter, like what alcohol was for him before he escaped the clutches of his town. It was irrational.

 _Don’t fight with Gansey_ , Adam told himself, his knuckles turning white against his sweatpants. Gansey did not have anything to do with why Adam was upset, but he was definitely not helping. With much effort, he bit his tongue before he said anything rude. He didn’t let go until the taste of iron threatened to leak into his mouth.

“Gansey,” Adam replied, to ease the silence of the room once he was sure he wouldn’t open his mouth and let insults fall out. His voice was cold but calm. His anger had seeped out of him through two syllables, the aftertaste of his anger.

The atmosphere became stifling and awkward. His good ear, as it was always conscious of everything, heard a rustle as Blue shrugged, surely an answer to a questioning gaze that came from Gansey. The anger was still warm in his gut. Why couldn’t they just speak to him directly? Why couldn’t they just acknowledge his presence in this room instead of tiptoeing around him like he was going to lash out?

Adam realized that, in all the time that had passed, he hadn’t looked up from the center table. Warily, he glanced up and saw Noah shake his head, at Gansey again.

He looked away, glared at his knuckles, before letting go of the vicious grip he had on his sweatpants. The cloth drew away, wrinkled. Somewhere deep inside him, he knew that he was going to lash out if they asked him what was wrong. Somewhere deep inside him, fear brewed. Was this how his father had felt?

Gansey cleared his throat, finally moving into the room. Suddenly, all attention was off of the fact that Adam had oh-so nearly snapped. It was a moment that brought Adam relief and shame. With all of his energy, he thought of Gansey’s panicked look at the stairwell, summoned his worry to shove aside his anger.

“As you may all know,” Gansey started, like there were more than four of them in the living room. “Adam is off the hook from shifting in the next few years. I’ve informed St. Clair, since he would be monitoring our time periods sans ability to shift. That’s the good news.”

Gansey sat down on an ottoman that was set aside somewhere. Blue sat down on the love seat next to him. Noah stood by the doorway, opting on just leaning on the frame instead of taking a seat. Adam looked, and saw Gansey giving him a small reassuring smile, “You’re good to go back to work until the proper amount of years has passed.”

Adam pulled a face, his lips tugging downwards at the side. He didn’t quite care about that information. In fact, that information was useless to him unless Ronan was okay. Gansey gave him an inquisitive look to parry his frown.

“What’s the bad news then,” Adam nearly demanded. Blue gave him a sharp look, something that hid pain and a little bit of pity. His stomach twisted into a mess of nerves and dread.

Save for the incident at the stairwell, Gansey usually had words at the tip of his tongue, summoned as if he could command not only every human around them, but also thoughts and ideas and things like words. But at that moment, he looked stricken, his eyes squinting in the way that said that he was resisting the urge to cringe.

He was hiding something. Adam glanced up at everyone, at Blue’s confrontational gaze, then at Noah’s averted look of resignation.

They were all hiding something from Adam.

The silence deafened his good ear, and in frustration, Adam leaned back and grasped at his bad ear. It used to calm him down, and it still did.

There were worse things someone could do to him, this motion reminded him, far more terrible things.

“I can see you turning this in your head,” Blue said, finally, aggressively. Adam continued to pull at his bad ear. “You think we’re hiding it from you, the fact that Ronan’s bedridden. If we were, Adam, we would have just told you that he’s back in DC.”

That was true, but that also wasn’t it. They were behaving like they were trying to protect him from some irreversible fact.

Blue muttered something under her breath, and it sounded like a curse. From his vantage point, Adam didn’t or couldn’t hear it with his good ear.

“You know what?” Blue asked, sounding tired and agitated, and it would have only served to fuel Adam’s anger further had he not been holding onto his bad ear for comfort. But he was calm, and her annoyance only served to make him feel inadequate, like angering her wasn’t what he’d meant to do, and it wasn’t.

“Ronan’s been puking up blood, that's what. He's been running a high fever, and is probably _dying_.”

It was such a rapid and uncaring delivery of words that Adam had to take his time to rethink the words, but rethinking words meant that he was aiming to say something about it, and like Gansey before, he could not think of anything to say to that.

“Let me elaborate,” Gansey spoke up, giving Blue an apologetic glance. Blue shrugged it off, gaze too fierce to appear nonchalant. Gansey looked back at Adam looking vaguely defeated after the brief exchange. “Ronan’s been bedridden for days now, and we were lucky enough to get him out of bed for New Year's Eve. We have enough claim and evidence to believe that his illness might be because of his… current inability to shift, so to speak.”

Gansey tried and tried again to rearrange words inside his head. Occasionally, he’d glance up at the ceiling as if he was reciting something from memory. Had Gansey rehearsed this explanation? “He, well, his inability to shift  _contributes_ to it, but he’s not dying _because_ of it. The disease is just continuously attacking his system, and he’s not providing the defenses for it, which is shifting; so now the effects are getting increasingly brutal the more time he spends not fighting it.”

Noah shifted in his stance by the doorway, cutting in with a, “Basically, the disease is getting so bad that he’s dying because he’s not doing anything to stop it.”

Gansey gave Noah’s bluntness a warning glare, but nodded, “Yes, that’s the gist of it, I suppose. So far, the only issue we’ve found with triggering his shift chemically is that the disease wouldn’t be affected by his brief shifting period. If he shifts, he has to stay one form to recover, then come back. If he doesn't then the impact kills him... The plan’s still faulty; you’ll have to forgive any holes in it.”

Adam made a face at this, processing the new information. He had no idea how long this has been a dilemma inside the lodge, but it seemed to have effects on each individual, Gansey the most, Noah the least. It was all a matter of composure and how to show it.

Adam sighed. His blood boiled and his stomach twisted in worry. Ronan was sick, though technically, every single person in the room was sick with the wolf, the difference was that the wolf wasn’t killing any of them. They were alright and Ronan was lying in bed, dying.

It’s been a total of three hours since Adam was a wolf and all of this information was just  _too much._

The room plunged into silence once more as Adam considered the information and thought of a response, before Gansey added, “We need to retrigger his disease, Parrish. It's the only that we could think of that could possibly get him back to shifting again. Our dilemma is that we’re short on the supply for diseased saliva.”

Adam grimaced, too conscious of the fact that he did not regret being cured even though Ronan desperately needed him as a wolf. It made Adam’s grimace all that grimmer at the thought of Ronan, who cared so much—too much, even—for Adam’s well-being, who was probably aware that the wolf was killing him with every minute he lived as himself.

“We need a wolf,” Adam muttered more to himself than to Gansey, but it was loud, too loud in the silence that had engulfed the room. His bad ear was warm under his fingers now, so he let go. The anxiety crawled back up his throat. 

His thoughts roared inside his head, thinking of ways to fix this. For a second, he faltered. He’d just gotten into this mess from being a wolf, and he was already trying to fix something.

He shoved the thought away. None of that self-deprecating shit mattered, all that mattered was

— _Ronan_.

Gansey gave Adam a perplexed look, but Blue spoke up before he could ask about it. “We have a wolf,” she told him, but her face looked absolutely disgusted and offended at her own thought. In reality, they were, each of them, wolves in this room, but she was talking about someone else.

Adam paused, realizing why she’d said it that way. His mind flashed back to yellowed newspapers on his coffee table; flashed back to five Henrietta teenagers going missing, seven years ago. Adam had met only four of them.

_Joseph Ka—_

“No,” Gansey protested, once he, too, realized what Blue had meant. He was shaking his head, adamant about this. Adam’s heart ached at the thought that Ronan would have protested this way too, maybe even more violently, with a flushed face, with flashing teeth, with knuckles white with how tight they were clenched.

Adam huffed, running his hand through his hair in frustration, “We don’t have much of a choice, if you really want to retrigger it without giving him a brain transplant or killing him if he doesn’t get to shift naturally. And if he continues puking his guts out, he won’t last more than six hours.”

Gansey heaved a sigh, and he almost looked pained with how he was considering it. A flash of sympathy and guilt flooded Adam for a second, but it was gone the next.

This was for Ronan.

**RONAN**

Ronan has had a thousand dreams, and one that started like this: the door to his room creaking open, the floorboards squeaking with the sound of damp feet and its protests under weights that Ronan could not see with his closed eyes, the bed dipping by his side, and a hand settling on his arm. In his dreams, these were focal points, small sensations heightened to levels he couldn’t bear. Right now was not any different.

Ronan has had a thousand dreams, and another that went like this: his eyes trying their best to open under the haze of slumber and the sand. His eyelids would stick and protest, and if he tried hard enough, his dream logic would tell him that he wouldn’t be able to open them anyway. This would be where this dream would drift to other dreams.

Ronan has had a thousand dreams, and one that went like this: a smile in his vision, and someone saying in a reverential voice, “ _Ronan_.” Ronan has a had a thousand dreams, a hundred thousand more that he could never remember, but this one was the most detailed.

This one had one defining feature: _Adam_.

Ronan opened his eyes completely, twisting his head to the side at this dream Adam. He blinked, waited for the dream to drift off into some other monster, as they often did. He waited for the touch trailing up from his arm to become wolf claws and those blue eyes turn green. But the vision did not shift, and he wasn’t drifting, as he always was in his dreams.

Ronan waited, and waited, and waited, but Adam just stared back at him with his head canted to the side in a way that made the light catch shadows on the planes of his face; his lips settled on an unconscious smile as his cold blue eyes raked Ronan’s features with a glint of wonder and worry. This was not how it was supposed to go down. Ronan was not supposed to see Adam, feel hope, and continue hoping like this. He was supposed to fall deep and deeper still, into the delirious dreams he had, pulling further and further away from the memory of Adam, even in his dreams.

“I just got back this afternoon,” Adam’s voice, exactly like Ronan remembered it, was soft and warm and with just a twinge of Henrietta that Ronan felt at home. Somehow, his achingly beautiful hands were warm on Ronan’s head, not warmer than Ronan but warm in the way he always was in Ronan’s dreams. His fingers were daintily trailing feather touches on Ronan’s scalp, and it was warm and so, so _real_.

 “I missed you so much,” Adam told him, and it filled him with more warmth and melancholy and—

Ronan’s throat was dry with sleep, and dream logic suggested that he could not speak, so he could do nothing but close his eyes against Adam’s touches, vulnerable to it even to his dreams. _I missed you too_ , Ronan wanted to say, _so fucking much_.

There was a knock on the door, and it always signaled the end of his delirious fever dreams. Noah’s head popped in, and he said something. Adam’s hand drew back.

Ronan realized, only after Noah closed the door, that Noah had said something, and that Adam had still not disappeared.

Was he still dreaming? Was this real?

“Ronan, I’m _real_ , you’re not—Wait, you dream of me?” Adam asked, his voice flattered and amused by the thought. His cold eyes were squinted, a smile in his eyes. Ronan flushed, despite himself. He had said that thought out loud.

He shook his head, embarrassed.

Adam grinned at him, then leaned forward to capture his lips.

This, Ronan realized, never happened in his dreams. His dreams always operated like they wanted him to miss Adam too much, like they wanted him to yearn so bad that he felt fatigued by it.

Without much thought, Ronan leaned into Adam, his hand reaching up to grab at Adam’s shoulder. Adam’s lips were wet and warm and _so real_. They stayed like that until Adam broke off and fondly said, “Oh good, now I’m gonna catch a fever.”

Ronan laughed, and held back a cough.

 _Adam was here_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another late update but hey! the plot! look, it moves! i forgot it was alive. anyway, yeah. i keep saying sorry for late updates, but really, i don't even think i mean to try and make up for lost time. mostly because i can't. 
> 
> but yeah, comments are still heavily appreciated. they keep me going. i'm sorry can't reply to most of them, not that i'm ever that busy. it's just that i really can't decide what i would say? i appreciate all your comments though!


	12. one thing i can't stand to lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan was not a thing to fix, Gansey reminded himself often, he was not a thing to change in an instant.

**GANSEY**

The uneasiness seeped into Gansey’s bones like the cold of a post-storm mist in the Henrietta mountains, though it was only a fair January evening in a forest a few minutes from Richmond. It was a regular visitor, this uneasiness. Gansey barely acknowledged it most days, but the sound of Ronan’s door clicking behind Adam’s retreating form had held a strong influence to it that afternoon. Noah and Blue both told him not to worry too much about it, which was a moot point.

In the dining room, Gansey glanced at the stairwell, towards the sound of Ronan’s stifled laughter.

Not for the first time in months, but one of the few times he had, Ronan stepped down from his room, hand-in-hand with Adam, to eat dinner with the rest of them. Not for the first time in years— back to years when Ronan used to get black-out drunk instead of senselessly high— Ronan needed a hand by his arm to keep him steady, accompanied by Adam’s soft murmurs to keep him shuffling down each step. Not for the first time in Gansey and Ronan’s relationship, there was a smile on Ronan’s face, but this was one that was wider than Gansey ever remembered seeing from before Niall Lynch died.

Gansey couldn’t find out if Ronan was mirroring Adam’s face or if Adam was mirroring his.

Briefly, Gansey pondered on Adam and Ronan’s relationship, their closeness, which was a sudden thing after a one-night fling. Just as briefly, Gansey saw the way Adam yelped fondly when Ronan rubbed stubble on his exposed neck, when they were on the same step on the stairs.  

When did they have time to _be together_ after everything that had happened?

With a tight smile, Gansey went back to diligently aligning all the plates and utensils on the table. He stepped aside as Blue brought the food from the kitchen, followed by Noah with the ladles and cups.

Something sad played in Gansey’s head, that reminded him that his wonderful friend was going to die; that reminded him that Ronan once didn’t mind if he walked off his own mortal coil; that made him realize that he was already mourning the death of a friend that was still living.

Ronan and Adam took a seat next to each other on the table once everything was set. Gansey offered polite dinner table conversation out of impulse. He tried not to give Adam looks when plans back to DC were made, how there will be visits every weekend. Adam seemed to know how to do his job, knew how and when to keep his mouth shut, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t make Gansey wary. Silently, Gansey hoped Ronan didn’t catch onto the dishonesty, but also hoped Ronan would call it out so that Adam could rethink his decision because it was a terrible one.

There were _nights_ in the past, Gansey remembered, nights when Ronan used to lay bare on the hood of the BMW back in Minnesota with this disturbingly dead look in his eyes as he waited and waited and _waited_ for either oblivion or the wolf to take him. It horrified Gansey, this look, because he couldn’t reach out to pull the deadness out of Ronan. Ronan was not a thing to fix, Gansey reminded himself often, he was not a thing to change in an instant.

Part of Gansey knew that the dead look was because of the image of the mouth of an open grave, swallowing a coffin that held a body that was too big to hold it. That was years ago, but it felt like decades or centuries to Gansey since the funeral had passed. To Ronan, it might have still been a fresh wound. Gansey had met Ronan in the last few months of Niall Lynch’s on-off presence, and he was there throughout the aftermath, and he couldn’t do anything back then.

Part of Gansey knew that it was because of the sharp insults thrown over the roars of engines during Henrietta summer days.

Joseph Kavinsky had done something to Ronan Lynch by providing the drugs that Ronan needed to attempt at taking his life away slowly.

Joseph Kavinsky had done something to Ronan Lynch while they were under the influence of said drugs, something that Ronan hadn’t consented to do.

Joseph Kavinsky had done something to Ronan Lynch, multiple times, in various ways, and it had done something to damage Ronan so deep that it haunted him years after.

Sexual assault was a line that wasn’t hard to cross when both people were under influence, but was hard to pinpoint when one of them started not liking what the other was doing. Kavinsky wouldn’t have cared who touched his body or when, but Ronan did and that proved to be a predicament when Kavinsky couldn’t have cared less.

 That predicament lasted longer in Ronan’s memories up until it felt like it was trying to make Ronan give up, and Gansey couldn’t do anything to pull Ronan out of the thoughts of giving up because it was Ronan who had to pull himself out.

Everyone in their group had learned to assume, to a certain extent, what awful things Kavinsky did. The assault had done an array of changes that were unnoticeable to the naked eye, but noticeable by Gansey, who’d seen Ronan’s transformation from before Niall Lynch, to after Niall Lynch, to after Kavinsky.

Everyone in their group had tried to subtly nurse him back to his old flame, tracked their progress bimonthly. Of course, they succeeded in their goals in some ways but also lost in some ways, because they treated their friend like he was a problem to fix. Ronan had told them just as much, the day they moved to DC, and everyone knew not to dwell on it outwardly anymore.

Everyone knew just about what they knew about it and that didn’t leave out Adam, who was fairly inexperienced to the still fresh wound that was Ronan’s memories of Kavinsky. Joseph Kavinsky was not someone Gansey wanted to pull back into their circle, but Ronan was dying and Kavinsky could help prevent that, and Adam was the one sensible enough—or simply did not dwell enough on the assault— to not want to murder Joseph Kavinsky on the spot for the things he caused.

Gansey tried not to clench his jaw too hard at the thought of needing help from _Kavinsky_ , of all people. He tried not to sigh deeply when Blue gave him a knowing glance from across the table, and a nudge under it. Thankful for the contact and the pull out of his reverie, Gansey nudged back at Blue’s knee halfheartedly, and felt his smile nudge itself into sincerity.

It seemed that he had been “politely silent” long enough for her to notice that he’d been lost in his thoughts. He looked down and found that dinner looked untouched and appetizing, but his stomach needed much convincing, and his plate was not getting any cleaner. This time, he did sigh.

 

* * *

 

“Blue, are you still awake?” Gansey asked, fatigue barely succeeding at pulling him into unconsciousness. His body was too aware of its edges to sink into slumber, and it was just as nearly aware that Blue’s edges were within reach.

The bed shuffled, sheets sighed across sheets as Blue stretched her feet, pushing herself back onto Gansey’s chest. That meant she was listening. Gansey breathed in the smell of his own detergent and soap on her. Persistent from the scent of mint, she smelled of lavender and home, and Gansey couldn’t help but smile every time he felt her warm between his arms like this, so he smiled.

“What?” Blue whispered when Gansey took too long to talk. In reality, he didn’t know what he was going to tell Blue when he’d asked to begin with. In response, he nuzzled his nose into the crook of her neck, pressing against her.

In the dark, Gansey felt her shuffling to keep herself from falling asleep in the warmth and softness of everything. Then, she sighed, her voice dream-like and soft as she spoke, “Look, it’s going to work. He’s going to be fine, it’ll all work out once we retrigger the shift.” The thing was, it was exactly what Gansey wanted to hear. Blue had the tendency to not give exactly that, because they both knew that it wasn’t what he needed to hear, so he waited what she had to say next.

“Noah’s going to come with Adam to look for Kavinsky tomorrow, and again until they track the fucker down. You don’t have to go and help, and neither do I, but we’re still going to have to look for him, unfortunately. It’s what we came to DC for, and it’s about time we settled things.”

Blue’s sleep-soft whispers were somehow just as fierce in the darkness, and it eased Gansey into a state more manageable than before. Eventually, her breathing slowed, and Gansey tried to follow after her.

In the background, Gansey could hear a breeze blow by leafless branches. In the foreground, wooden floorboards creaked with the temperature, and if Gansey concentrated enough, he would be able to hear everyone breathing. But he didn’t. Instead, Gansey focused on Blue’s, relished the warmth of her in his arms like this.

Just as he was sure that Blue was asleep and he had not followed, she squeezed reassuringly at his arm around her waist and whispered, “Sleep.”

And so Gansey did.

* * *

 

The next morning, with help from Blue and Noah, Gansey prepared and made the chemical recipe that Cole St. Clair originated for manual shifting.

As was expected, he had minimal sleep, only catching a few hours after Blue told him to. That meant that his mind was less than functional, and the stumbling around the kitchen increased. Noah provided help as much as he could with a tumbler of tea and moving to push bottles and other containers away from the counter edge and Gansey’s sides.

Blue had enough insight to bring the test tubes and beakers with them so that they didn’t need to use cups and mugs this time, and it provided Gansey with enough energy to praise her for her sensibility. It had been a mess when they hadn’t brought the beakers two years ago. There were still claw marks on the kitchen floorboards and cracks on the counter to prove that it wasn’t just some bad trip they were all incidentally on. Gansey and Noah worked hard to scrub at the mugs and pots and pitchers until their fingers were prune-y and raw.

As a unit, Gansey, Blue, and Noah moved in companionable silence, so the work was quick and efficient and did not help Gansey’s anxiety because the clock was tick, tick, _ticking_ and it was one second closer to Ronan shifting into a wolf for the first time in _years_.

Everything was put away by the time Ronan and Adam had shuffled their way down the stairs for breakfast.

The meal was fairly peaceful-looking. Sometimes Blue or Noah would be talking about certain things like if it had snowed while Adam was a wolf, or if there was any news in Congress recently, idle things that adults talked about these days like their wacky co-worker stories or crazy work experiences. Adam was eager to share things, would often have the whole group laughing at his tall tales from law school.

Ronan seemed to adore each word that fell out of Adam’s mouth, in Adam’s fading but prominent Henrietta drawl, but Gansey knew him enough to know that Ronan was actually too busy adoring Adam’s mouth.

As someone who was a tad too anxious about what was going to happen, someone who hated anything that reminded him that he was a Gansey (college, Congress, a polite reflex), and as someone who was unemployed, Gansey found himself becoming quiet after each pause in the conversations. These were rare moments indeed, and if he lacked any composure at all, he’d have stood and left the group alone. Instead, he caught Noah’s worried inquisitive glance, shrugged, and began gathering all the plates for washing.

The second day into the New Year was when Ronan was sent into the woods.

Considering the mood that Gansey has had since the previous night, the weather seemed to be faring better. Of course, anything would be faring better than a Richard Campbell Gansey III about to set a Ronan Lynch out into the woods with nothing but hypothesis to go on. Once there existed a Richard Campbell Gansey III that wanted to believe and continue believing the impossible, but life had begun to mellow that Gansey out the moment the shifts stopped.

Life slowed him down.

With a deep breath, Gansey forced himself to recall Blue’s words from the previous night.

Ronan would have to survive on injections for the next few months if the group couldn’t find anything to help retrigger his shifting. If Gansey had a clearer mind and less of a guilty conscience, he would have had the right mind to just call on Cole for help. But as it was, they already owed the Minnesota pack one too many favors, and if there was anything Gansey learned throughout his years, it was that owing someone too many favors made it hard to move on.

Kavinsky would have to be their only viable option, he admitted bitterly. The thought didn’t sting as much as he wanted it to, but it was enough to make his stomach twist nervously. His mind flashed back to Ronan clutching harshly at Adam’s discarded clothes, glaring Kavinsky down by the warehouse entrance. He remembered feeling like absolute shit when he realized that he’d just stood there while Ronan faced his fears.

When it was finally time to trudge out into the woods, Gansey couldn’t help it when the wind stung his eyes and prickled tears into being. He couldn’t help it when he sniffled not-subtly either. The syringe in Adam’s hand seemed all the more important-looking. The sprinkling of light and shadow on his back, and the tattoo seemed all the more prominent across pale skin. It was a mirror image of when they sent Adam out, with Ronan’s fist clutching the syringe so hard that Gansey brought a spare in case it broke, and Adam’s faded tan lines and freckles.

Blue, Gansey and Noah left space between Adam and Ronan, let them settle their goodbyes like they had three months ago.

Gansey could feel Noah press into his side, and Blue’s fingers wiping at his cheeks. He stared at his feet, careful not to look at the too-private moment of Ronan clutching at Adam’s arm, careful not to listen into their muffled murmurs lost in the ambiance of the forest around them. A breeze blew by, and Gansey closed his eyes against it.

It took a while before they could hear Ronan’s stifled sobs of pain accompanied by Adam’s reassuring tone. It was right about the time Gansey squeezed his eyes shut, and right about the time that sounds that can only come from wolves started.

The deed was done by the time Gansey made himself open his eyes, soon to see Adam walking away from a wolf that was staring intently at his retreating form. Adam didn’t stop walking even as the wolf made a faux pas towards them.

Gansey jogged to meet his gait, trying not to look behind them. “You don’t have to do it,” he told Adam as he told him yesterday.

Adam glanced at him, gaze skeptical and inquisitive and not at all convinced that Gansey was saying this for their sakes. He knew that Gansey meant that they didn’t have to look for Kavinsky. Gansey knew that he shouldn’t have said it when Adam didn’t say anything.

He didn’t know why he even tried.

Like the wolf behind them, he watched Adam’s retreating form.

* * *

 

**ADAM**

Three days were spent between work in the firm and getting driving lessons from Noah, cruising around the streets during between afternoons, nights, and days off. The city was a sight for sore eyes, a feeling he was familiar with. He just never thought he would have felt it after thinking to have escaped Henrietta’s clutches.

On the first day, Adam had to reintegrate with society, deal with co-workers, coax Noah into telling him what they’d told his firm when he shifted. A bad case of dengue fever was what Gansey had told his firm. He had to be taken to Richmond to get treatment, apparently. The lie was flimsy, seeing as there weren’t a lot of mosquitoes in DC, but his co-workers patted him on the back for his recovery anyway, and apologized that they couldn’t send in get-better gifts, because they didn’t know where he was staying.

The first day was quite uneventful, considering that his boss had already assigned cases for the week. That meant that Adam was off duty for the rest, so he took his leave, and walked to Monmouth.

They decided to use the BMW, for all its worth, to look for Joseph Kavinsky around DC. Noah argued that at least they could drain the gasoline before Ronan got back, and when that didn’t appeal to Adam’s tastes, Noah told him that it was to remind them who they were doing this for. They switched frequently, especially when Adam became too tired on the wheel, tired enough for Noah to notice and tell him to pull over for a switch. Adam appreciated it.

Really, he was grateful he even had someone to search with, and was even more grateful for it for when he eventually succeeded in finding Kavinsky.

Joseph Kavinsky.

The name held no significance to Adam, other than he heard of it back in the hallways and classrooms of both Mountain View Middle and Aglionby Academy, and that he had been inside the engine of the rich fucker’s car more times than he’d gone down inside the sanctuary that was the church below his apartment.

Joseph Kavinsky was a year older than him, attending Aglionby Academy at age thirteen, but was held back a grade by reasons Adam only heard rumors of: felonies he only ever heard of in crime shows, sexual assault, underage drinking, DUI, theft, homicide. Adam didn’t know which was fact or fiction, but he did remember feeling nothing but contempt, thought nothing of it as a passing phase through his monotonous Henrietta town. Joseph Kavinsky was just one of those rich kids that could get away with anything.

He shared a dormitory building with the teen too, for a few days before he could move into St. Agnes, felt more than heard the sound of the bass underneath his feet during the weekend he spent there. He could smell the acrid stench of alcohol in the halls during those nights and early mornings, enough to have served a bitter reminder of why he was staying inside the building. Along with the tick of the clock, he could hear the growl of their cars from across the quad.

Joseph Kavinsky was a phenomenon, an old wives’ tale’s villain, a fucking hurricane that Adam could only hear about. They’ve never met face to face, but Adam’s disassembled and reassembled his car and his car’s engines for days at a time, the visits more frequent during the summer. The brakes on the thing had endurance that could rival his own, but the engine could only take so much heat.

The white Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution was a teenage boy’s non-sexual wet dream, and Adam could say that it definitely smelled like someone had a wet dream in it. He remembered finding a used condom inside it once, when Boyd told him that Kavinsky wanted it cleaned too. Adam did it for the extra pay, not really caring who Kavinsky was or what he did, only remembered the disdain.

His stomach clenched, his knuckles whitened over the steering wheel, his feet went cold over the pedals. Now he knew why he found it, what Kavinsky was doing in his car, _who_ Kavinsky was doing in goddamn car.

The light above them counted down from twenty in blaring red digits. The pedestrians ran through. To their right, a dog barked at five other dogs across the street. Adam watched this all in some devoid part of space, not hearing, only seeing.

The memory of Ronan’s tears came into Adam’s mind, made something akin to guilt or anger drop into his stomach, made his blood run cold. What had happened?

“I don’t get it,” Noah spoke up, and Adam almost jumped in his seat. The engine was so silent and smooth, and the drive was brought to a crawl by weekend traffic, and the radio was off, and Noah had not spoken until that very moment. Adam almost forgot that Noah was even there with him.

Adam cleared his throat. “What do you not get?” he asked once his heart rate was back to normal.

Noah looked at Adam with those eyes that seemed to look through Adam’s and straight into his head. Adam suppressed a shiver and looked back at the street they were driving down, hoping to God that Noah didn’t notice anything.

“We’ve looked through all the bars and shady parts of town, hell, we’ve asked people around about the fucker,” Adam stiffened in his seat. Noah was never the type to curse. What had Kavinsky _done_? Noah continued, “And still we have nothing _._ Where _is_ he?”

The light turned green but the people crossing the street barely paid it any mind. Adam patiently waited for the crowd to thin out in front of the BMW, paying no mind to the blaring horns of the cars right next to him. The last in the crowd was a suburban mom, white roots popping out in the dyed brown hair, wrinkles prominent with the frown on her face as she tugged her child along.

Adam pressed on the gas as soon as he saw a wide enough opening, ignoring shouts. Once there was a few minutes between Adam and the persistent pedestrians of the market district of DC, he let out a loud gasp, one that made Noah jump in his seat.

“That’s it!” He shouted just as Noah yelped, his vocal reaction later than his physical one.

Adam grinned, laughed, drove faster, felt the rumble of the engine beneath his feet; was this what street racers felt? Adrenaline coursed through him as Noah hung onto the latch by the roof, stiff posture showing nervousness. Adam laughed some more.

“You know, you’re starting to drive like Ronan,” Noah commented with a tremor in his voice that made Adam’s grin stretch out further. “It’s like this car does that to people.” Adam just laughed at him again, but eased up on the gas. His cheeks started hurting once they reached a freeway.

Noah slowly relaxed in his seat once the speed was at a reasonable pace. “What’s all the excitement about?” he asked, “Share.”

Adam did, looking back out the road. “We’re looking in the wrong places,” Adam told him. He willed himself to stop the excitement in his voice but it was hard to do post-epiphany, especially after three days without a lead. “He might be shitty, but he was rich. Maybe he’s in the nicer parts of DC?”

There was the silence again, and it lasted long enough this time to make him think that maybe he’d been alone inside the BMW the whole time. Adam held his breath then sighed. It was a stupid idea. Noah would know Kavinsky better than Adam did, than some hick mechanic pretending to be above his own origins.

Adam was about halfway through berating himself, halfway through convincing himself enough to not be disappointed of Noah’s rejection before Noah said, “I didn’t even think of that.”

Adam glanced, and saw the grin on Noah’s face, and the color on his cheeks. Adam looked back out the road, warmth and relief filling his being. “You know, if Ronan weren’t dating you, I’d kiss you, you darned genius valedictorian lawyer you.”

Adam laughed at that, and Noah did too, and they laughed and laughed, and didn’t think ahead on the fact that he’d just found a hypothetical lead to the person that Ronan Lynch hated so much that he had to push away everyone and everything: his friends, his past, the loss of his own identity.

Too caught up in the joy and wonder of epiphanies and progress, Adam stepped on it, and laughed as Noah yelped and scrambled to find his grip on the handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, look, the story's still alive! 
> 
> I'm so sorry, I swear, it's going to end pretty soon, and I'm going to get it all out pretty soon. 
> 
> If possible, please keep the comments about the story, it's not that I don't want appreciate the indications about my depression, but I am trying my best to remedy it both as a high school student and a teen.


	13. used to be the one you'd come to when it'd all go to shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What had Kavinsky done?

**ADAM**

They didn’t find Kavinsky easily after Adam’s epiphany, and one of Adam’s co-workers had managed to drag him into a case for the time being, which meant that he lost more time for his own job rather than for the search. Adam did his best to squeeze in hours for it, spent time looking for records and check ins into motels, hotels, apartments, _anything_ in the past three years that may have suggested where Kavinsky would have stayed.

By the time his rest days came, he was back to his high school sleep schedule: wake up, work, go home, work, nap, wake up. Repeat cycle until exhausted, he jokingly told himself. He was starting to feel less like a lawyer and more like a detective in one of the books he was once required to read in AP Lit. Though, he doubted Sherlock Holmes ever felt like he could drop at any given moment.

One particularly tired night, while in the BMW with Noah, waiting in a McDonald’s drive-thru queue, after four hours of searching after work, Adam joked, “This is the longest I’ve spent inside a car without being under it.” And when Noah looked at him funny he felt his nerves wind up into a knot in his stomach and said, “I was a mechanic in high school.”

“Oh, that’s neat,” Noah said, and Adam felt the knot in his stomach loosen as he saw none of the criticism he’d expected on Noah’s face, nor heard any tone that suggested dismissal. But then, maybe Adam was just too hungry to detect it.

“I was a dropout,” Noah stated after a pause, with a grin on his face and his hand resting on the steering wheel easily as if he owned the car. Laughter bubbled into Adam’s throat at the statement and it spilled out, unexpectedly, as they waited for their orders by the window.

Adam let Noah pay for their food that night. Noah did him a favor by not mentioning it.

 

* * *

 

That stressful Friday morning, Adam had a lead on the search. With proper assistance, of course.

Erica Lanning, his assistant from the firm, came into his office that morning with two cups of coffee and one thin folder in both of her hands. There was that polite look on her face, the red of her lips vibrant and bloody in a close-mouthed grin, one that Adam knew to be both friendly and a tinge deceitful.

“Erica, hi, good morning,” Adam greeted, his voice breathless and a little bit tired. He leaned back in his chair, clenching and unclenching his fists to get rid of any cramps spent on top of a keyboard and clutching a pen. Erica had taken him by surprise by barging into the office like that, and he told her just as much.

“Knock next time, please.”

“Yes, sir. Good morning, sir,” she replied quickly. Then, without missing a beat, “I found a match for your search, Mr. Parrish.”

It was delivered cheerfully as she slapped the file on top of his desk. It was slapped on with the intentions clear in the air. ‘ _I helped you,_ ’ it said. Adam hated to admit, but he actually felt a little better after hearing those words and seeing the file on his desk, never mind the inkling feeling of a debt he’d have to repay.

“Twenty-six year old Caucasian male under the name Joseph Kavinsky living near Baltimore, in an apartment building smack-dab in the middle of the suburbs,” Erica recited carefully.

He eyed the file in front of him with a bit of caution at the mention of Kavinsky’s name—because it was still a vast difference of theory and reality, Kavinsky’s existence—and the cup of coffee set next to it was eyed with just as much suspicion at the sight of Erica’s name spelled incorrectly on the side of it. The zeal of the gestures was just starting to get to him, and it unsettled him greatly.

He could count on Erica on anything from files to cases, Adam knew that much, but he also couldn’t trust her enough to tell her something more than half-truths about what he was doing: how he was trying to solve a missing person’s case from his old town with open permission from Henrietta sheriffs. There was also the fact that she was just doing all these favors for a glistening hope of a raise or a better case, anything to get out of being Adam’s assistant.

Adam took a breath, “Erica,” He was trying not to look at her face at this point. Her lipstick was giving him a bit of a headache, so he settled on staring at the wall clock behind her shoulder.

“Yes, Mr. Parrish?”

Adam winced, at the sound of his surname. He was planning on dismissing her gratefully, but when his surname was used like that, it added to his blooming headache and was a convincing persuasion to make him do otherwise. So he did.

“It’s been three months, Ms. Lanning, please just call me Adam. I quite dislike my last name.” Nothing like the truth to set someone free, Adam supposed. He watched distantly as her expression shifted.

Erica nodded, the smile on her red lips tight and fake. She turned and the only audible sound Adam could hear in his good ear was the muffled groan of air-conditioning, her heels on the refurbished floor, and the click of the door closing shut as she exited.

He’d ticked her off, possibly. With a careful sigh, he tried to tell himself that the uplifting feeling in his chest was from getting a lead, not from causing anxiety to bloom into his assistant’s head.

Sometimes, he disgusted himself with reveling in the feeling of that.

Ignoring his thoughts, he opened the folder. The file read as she’d said. It was a match: Joseph Kavinsky, 26, moved into an apartment building about three years ago. His statement said he paid for the housing in cash, so that meant that a) Kavinsky had a hold on his trust fund, b) he had no roommates and c) Adam was right to think that he might have moved into the better parts of town.

Without any further hesitation, Adam’s hand copped around for his phone. It slid nicely into his palm where it was settled next to his desktop’s keyboard. He sent a quick text to Noah, requesting to bring the BMW around the apartment in an hour or so.

Adam lost himself in the file for about half an hour, not really reading but just looking. The caffeine high had begun losing its effects by the time he’d drank more than two cups. He closed his eyes, leaning back on his desk chair, relishing in the sound of the squeak of the old metal ringing in his good ear. By the time he’d opened them, it was time to leave.

On the way out, he apologized to Lanning and felt a little better about it.

* * *

 

It was high noon when they got to driving around to Baltimore. On the passenger seat, Noah drew comments about how this could be it, how the search could stop finally. There was an unspoken agreement between them to never make it feel like they’d enjoyed the search too much, like they weren’t the least bit unnerved at finding Joseph Kavinsky at long last.

A bit of a dark mood settled itself on Noah’s shoulders, dimming his mischievous smiles. Adam did not falter in his driving, did not fail himself and bring it up.

What had Kavinsky done?

The building Adam parked in front of looked nothing like they’d expected. For one, Adam expected the lush five-star hotel look, with its own fountain at the front, and their valets crisp and ready for assistance. Kavinsky was rich, the last time he checked.

Noah, as much as he’d told Adam when he saw it, had expected some cheap establishment about four stories high. Something that looked like it was going to be demolished in a few days, though that wasn’t what was written on the file. Adam thought that maybe it was bias; maybe Noah was projecting since he quite disliked Kavinsky.

Adam parked in the lot, thanking the security guard for helping him reverse into the spot. The guard nodded at him and greeted him a good morning before running off to help someone else. Adam made a mental note to tip the guy later.

The building was neither grand nor gritty. If he could pin a word or two on it, it would be ‘horribly domestic’. The sides bore the sign of vibrant colors once existing, now replaced by varying shades of salmon and washed-out yellow. Verandas showcased towels drying in the cold air, and tenants smoking by the rails. Some of them were on their phones, their mouths moving in their own bubbles of conversation.

Adam and Noah wouldn’t have guessed that Kavinsky would live in such a place. It reminded Adam of families in St. Agnes, on particularly lonely Christmas Eves. It was a place to feel out of place and at home in, simultaneously.

But then again, that was the point; it shouldn’t be easy to find him.

Kavinsky was in hiding, and he had hidden well.

* * *

 

Asking the lady by the counter for the room and floor was easy enough. All Noah did was stand around and let Adam deal with it. The clerk couldn’t see past Adam’s politeness, and Adam couldn’t see past the fact that he was blanking out while he was talking.

They were on the elevator before he knew that he’d stepped into it, heading up eight floors. Room 814 was their destination, and the vertigo on the way up was not helping. His palms began sweating, and he resisted wiping the dampness of it on his pant legs.

The facts went off in his head, sure-fire bullets of panic coursing through his being: Kavinsky was a stranger to him. Noah was becoming grimmer by the second. Gansey didn’t want this, so Ronan wouldn’t have wanted it either. Adam didn’t know what he was doing, just that he needed to save Ronan. He didn’t know if he loved Ronan or if he just wanted to save Ronan. Noah was beginning to look like he was starting to rethink not staying in the car. Adam didn’t bring enough change for the security guard.

He still didn’t know what Kavinsky did.

They arrived on the eighth floor way too soon, and Adam felt all his nerves fry and short-circuit completely. But then, it evened out, and he felt detached, strangely enough. The situation began to clear up in his head. He recognized the sensation like the swinging fist seared into his memory, welcomed it even.

The mission plan was easy. They were to persuade Kavinsky to give them the one thing that Ronan needed to live past this month: his saliva. Adam hoped it wouldn’t need to go over diplomacy, because he wasn’t certain if he could channel his aggression through the haze over his emotions.

Room 814 looked as dull as he thought it would. The door was the same as the others in the dizzyingly similar corridors, but it was also more horrifying than the rest. It wasn’t the exterior appearance that was intimidating; it was just that Adam was intimidated by the idea of the person behind it.

His knuckles hesitated to rap onto the wood, earning an inquisitive look from Noah. When he didn’t meet Noah’s gaze, he could feel the shame sink in through the haze that his mind set up for him. All of the hours and sleep they sacrificed for the search felt a little pointless in that moment, just because Adam couldn’t muster the courage to talk.

 _Talk_.

The idea was laughable to a darker part of his mind. He was going to talk to this stranger just because his not-boyfriend was going to die. It was absurd, almost as absurd as the idea of turning into a wolf every winter season. He didn’t even know if this would help Ronan. He didn’t know if talking to Kavinsky would get him to do what they thought they needed him to do.

What was Adam doing?

“We can try tomorrow,” Noah reassured, and Adam almost took the out right then and there. It was as tempting as a warm bed with Ronan resting in it. Oh, how it enticed him. But Adam kept strong. The only way he would have Ronan back would be to help him through this, and whether or not this plan was going to work didn’t matter. Adam was going to have to _try_. His knuckles met the chipped paint of the door once, twice, three times.

The answer, as expected, wasn’t opened in that instant and he welcomed it. Anything to buy him more time.

The door swung open before he could add another thought in, and he was greeted by stylishly tousled brown hair, a dirty white tank top, and green eyes that could startle anyone.

So _this_ was Joseph Kavinsky, he thought to himself.

“Wrong door,” Kavinsky told him blankly. Adam stood, speechless, and watched as Kavinsky’s eyes roamed from his to Noah’s, turned from blank to dark.

“And the wrong fucking person,” he muttered, moving to close the door. Noah stepped forward and stuck his foot into the closing motion of it, the sound loud in the corridor they were standing in and inside Adam’s good ear.

Briefly, Adam wondered if there were any other tenants on this floor eavesdropping into this spectacle, then berated himself for thinking it. This wasn’t the trailer park, he told himself, people tended to mind their own business in the city.

“We’re here to talk to you,” Noah persisted, his voice unexpectedly serious, so unlike the usual crumpled adolescent tone to it. “So unless you’re not the Joseph Kavinsky who turns into a wolf every time there’s a cold draft, we’re at the right door.”

The door swung open again, but not enough to let them in. Kavinsky leaned out, his glare sharper than anything Adam’s seen before.  “No, I think you didn’t hear me clearly,” he hissed. “You have the wrong fucking door, _Czerny_ , so you better take your new pet project for a hike and leave before he pisses on the carpets.”

This, Adam was prepared for. This sounded much like the Kavinsky he was expecting. Slowly, he brought himself out of his shock.

He thought back to any mention of Kavinsky before this, before their trip. Blue retold the tale of it on the eve of his departure, he thought, but it was only the details that he could remember. Kavinsky had barged into the warehouse that the gang resided in and ransacked the place the night that Ronan stayed over.

“If you had the balls to break into their home,” Adam started, watching the words fall out of his mouth and green eyes settle on him once more. He was more aware of his clipped accent than anything, especially under that gaze. “Then we have every right to invite ourselves into yours.”

The silence that followed was brief but charged. He realized too late that Kavinsky was not just looking at him, but glaring. He realized too late that he didn’t really care what Kavinsky thought of him.

“Crass words coming from you, scholarship,” Kavinsky snarled, but opened the door either way. Briefly, Adam’s stomach dropped with his façade, and Kavinsky saw it in his face because his snarl turned into a grin as he stepped back to let them in. “That’s right, I’ve heard of your trashy ass. Go ahead, Parrish.”

He should have counted on Kavinsky to remember him. They all went to the same school after all, had the same professors. He didn’t doubt that somehow, Kavinsky, who probably visited the guidance counselor as often as Adam did—though it was for different reasons— would have heard of the name Adam Parrish uttered by the professors who liked him enough to present him as an example.

Adam breathed and glanced away from Kavinsky. Beside him, Noah looked confused, and Adam remembered that he had yet to tell the gang that he was from Aglionby like the most of them, or that he lived in Henrietta, for that matter.

Adam told Ronan though. Just Ronan, always just Ronan.

He glanced back at Kavinsky, careful to keep his gaze neutral, and stepped inside the apartment. He almost laughed just as he heard the door clicked shut behind him.

The room was… It was a mess, and it was a homey teenage mess. The room was a bit smaller than Adam’s condo unit, with clothes scattered on every surface, clean or dirty. Dishes were stacked in the sink, cups of instant noodles were littered around the overflowing trash bin; Adam has never seen such a messy establishment since college that he almost felt nostalgic.

“Seems to me like our roles are reversed,” the words came out of his tongue before he thought better of it, but Kavinsky’s grin became sharper and more dangerous. “Nice place?” Adam tried to remedy the insult, but it came out flimsier than he’d intended it to be.

He was pressed not to wince at whatever he said, pressed not to react so that it didn’t seem like he didn’t know what he was doing. Kavinsky’s green eyes looked unnervingly knowing but Adam countered it. _You don’t know me_ , he thought, blue battling green.

Noah cleared his throat, but Kavinsky cut him off before he could say something. “I’m sure you didn’t fucking invite yourself in to insult my place, because if you did, you can get the fuck out. Door’s just behind you.”

“You insulted me first,” Adam retorted, going back to regarding the room. “And it’s not like I actually hurt your feelings. That seems to be your department.”

Kavinsky let out a terrible laugh, something that sounded, impossibly, like a choking raven. “You’re right, you didn’t, and it is.” The laughter was awkward but short-lived, thankfully. Noah moved into the room fast, moving messes to make way for himself, but letting the messes fall back, making it look like he was wading through liquid.

Adam stayed by the doorway, watching as Kavinsky settled on a stool by the counter while Noah settled on the arm of a questionably-stained couch. “So,” Kavinsky started, sounding bored of this already. “You two idiots just invited yourself in, and I was having such a fine day doing my own shit before you did. What the fuck do I owe you?”

“What were you doing?” Noah asked conversationally. Adam glanced at him and felt that maybe Noah wanted to have this conversation just as much as he did. He was also felt that maybe the answer to Noah’s question wasn’t tidying the place up.

“Jerking off,” Kavinsky deadpanned, making an obscene gesture. His eyes stayed on Adam when he did this, and it made it all the more uncomfortable. “Now quit stalling so I can continue. Why are you here?”

Adam met Noah’s eyes, saw that Noah had no clear intentions to quit stalling, and sighed. “Alright, then,” he muttered. He turned to look at Kavinsky, and found Kavinsky staring back with his unnervingly green eyes. Ronan had seemed keen to not talk about Kavinsky, and Adam could see why now. If a mere stare was enough to unnerve even Adam, who rarely ever got unnerved, there was going to be some issues.

But he still didn’t know what Kavinsky had done.

“We’re here to ask for your help, so to speak,” Adam said carefully, and before Kavinsky could retort to that, he added, “All we need is your saliva and we’ll leave.”

Kavinsky seemed to consider this for a second, taking a sip from a glass of something that smelled like alcohol that had been on the counter the moment they entered the room. Adam didn’t think it should be alcohol, but the air in the room smelled of the acrid sludge. Maybe it was engrained into the walls.

“What’s in it for me?” Kavinsky asked, and Adam knew that he was going to ask that.

“Redemption?” Noah piped up, now leaning against the back of the couch, but still not willing to sit on its cushions. Kavinsky snorted, but Adam didn’t know if it was because of Noah’s suggestion or Noah’s distrust of his furniture.

“No,” Adam said firmly. Kavinsky’s eyes had never left his form, but his attention crept back like vines. Adam stood still and let it. “That depends on you, Kavinsky, but contact with Lynch is strictly off the deal.”

Kavinsky raised a brow at this, his grin sharp behind his drink. “Shame, Parrish. That could’ve been my bargaining chip.” Adam felt his hackles rise at the sound of his last name rolling off Kavinsky’s tongue. “How’s being Lynch’s new bitch, by the way? He and I used to be tight as ticks, so to speak. At least _one_ of us sucked the other dry.” He laughed his raven’s choke, “Stole that one off of Dick.”

Adam’s fingers tingled, felt his shoulders rise past his ears as he pushed off of the doorway before he heard Noah say, “He’s doing that on purpose, Adam.”

Adam knew. He shook himself out of the boiling anger that almost blocked his senses, but kept his glare sharp on Kavinsky.

“I don’t want to be here as much as you don’t want us to be,” Adam growled at Kavinsky, low but still managing to be heard inside the room. In his good ear, he sounded tired and gravelly and wrecked. Kavinsky didn’t care enough to comment on it. “I’m not forcing you to help us, so if you don’t want to then what the fuck ever.”

Kavinsky seemed keen to interrupt him, but Adam was keen to get out of here after having a dying man insulted. He didn’t know what Kavinsky’s deal was, and he didn’t care what everyone’s deal with Kavinsky was.

“Ronan is _dying_ ,” Adam stated, plain, short, and simple, but saw that he couldn’t continue the statement.

There were three things that were brought to his attention.

One was that the statement gradually grew in importance once it was uttered. Adam had never really faced the facts out loud yet. He wanted to keep it conceptualized so that he wouldn’t mourn too early. It would leave him empty afterwards.

Ronan was dying, not dead, he reminded himself.

Second was that Kavinsky’s eyes looked horribly dead and alive all at the same time. A range of emotions passed through his face, from confusion, then brief terror, to anger. Adam’s shoulders stayed tense at this.

Third was that Adam didn’t know how Kavinsky would react now. He’d been counting on this conversation as difficult, but not enough to get a rise out of Adam. The insults were petty and predictable, but Ronan’s honor came first and foremost.

Bringing Adam out of his reverie was Kavinsky laughing, again, but not as the raven’s choke it once was, but as something emptier and definitely more dejected. It made Adam’s stomach churn with discomfort, the sensation crawling under his skin as he watched Kavinsky’s eyes settle on his once more, this time searching.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me, Parrish. You think that’s going to be some—some _motivator_ for me or something?”

The frown that crawled onto Adam’s face was dark, grim, and serious. The brand of his surname was hot against his ears, and he hoped that the look on his face, the tension in his shoulders, and the way that his fists were clenched held no intentions of motivating Kavinsky into doing _anything_.

Adam wasn’t kidding.

Ronan was dying.

The twinkle of anger in Kavinsky’s dead eyes—Adam only now realized that they’d been dead looking the whole time—seeped into the points of his lips, presenting a burden enough to make Cheshire-like Kavinsky frown for once. His brows did a funny thing, and so did his face, and for a split second, Adam thought that it looked like grief.

His shoulders drooped, his fists unclenching, limp by the sides as he watched Kavinsky, once unnerving and irritating, slump into his seat and run his fingers through his stylishly-tousled hair. Adam watched as it became more obvious just how trashy Kavinsky really did become.

The room they resided felt less homey, more cold and like no one inhabited it often enough. The mess became a sadder sight, and so did Kavinsky. His eyes had crescent twins under them, and his pallor was paler than Adam had seemed to observe earlier.

Kavinsky was just a man, and the room was just a room.

A sigh was wretched off of Kavinsky as violently as the fight out of his system was, and as sad as the mess around them. Adam couldn’t bear to hear something so pathetic, but he knew the feeling well.

When Kavinsky spoke again, he sounded a bit pained. “What’s his damage then?” he asked, voice now sounding more compliant and tired. His words were curt and uncharacteristically soft. “And what’s it got to do with you needing my spit?”

Your _help_ , Adam wanted to correct, but found that he had no energy to do so. Kavinsky was hiding behind his casual rudeness. Adam was a veteran in hiding, and knew what it looked like presented to him. He didn’t mention it.

What had Kavinsky _done_?

Noah moved to take the conversation here, giving Adam a well-deserved break, a moment to mourn, and a moment to ponder.

The words that explained Ronan’s incapacity wretched a lot of strength out of Kavinsky, Adam observed, and he knew that it would have taken a lot out of him too, if it hadn’t already. Adam raked his gaze over boney fingers and sunken eyes that looked to be the byproduct of lonely nights. Kavinsky was as haunted by Ronan as Ronan was by him, Adam thought.

Or maybe he wasn’t clean from the drugs yet.

The haze was back, and Adam welcomed it as he had before. He could feel it in his cold fingertips, and in the way his eyes couldn’t focus on anything. The mourning did not attack his mind as he thought it would, and Adam didn’t know whether to be grateful or worried about that.

“He was coughing up blood,” Adam heard himself say after he noticed the silence that settled around him. Kavinsky looked at him, looking a little bit wrecked. Adam could empathize with that. “He couldn’t even walk down the stairs.”

“We don’t know if it’s going to work, Jose—Kavinsky,” Noah stumbled, earning Kavinsky’s attention again. “But it’s all we can do to try and keep him alive.”

The silence that followed was charged, but Adam could barely feel it anymore, under the haze he was still in.

* * *

**NOAH**

The steady purr of the BMW under his bare feet—he always liked to drive with his feet touching the pedal—was as relaxing as it always was. Which was, usually, not at all. For one, the sound of the engine reminded him of nights with a restless Lynch, and for another, the air-co blasting on his face made his reflexes tense with the memory of an incoming agonizing shift.

On the tinted windows, the final signs of DC faded behind them, leaving them nothing, not even the scene of distant skyscrapers in the distance, no. Their speeding black bullet of a car was swallowed by the first few signs of woods.

Oh, the woods, Noah missed them so much. Ignoring the fact that he’s only been away from it for about a few hours, but Adam didn’t need to know that, because he’s been going behind the lawyer’s back for a reason, and going to the cabin every few days was always for groceries and checking to see if Ronan was there.

He’s seen Ronan more times than Adam since they gave the search a first shot. Which was one more than Adam has.

A light hit his eye from the peripherals of his vision, and if there were more cars on the road, he would have cursed because that was right about the time that the BMW swerved a few feet into the next lane. Instead of cursing, he switched lanes, squinted through the light, and glanced at his passenger seat, where a very sullen Adam Parrish sat, holding up a vial of clear liquid.

Noah pursed his lips, trying to work out what to say, trying to calm himself down a little. He glanced back at the road on intervals, made sure that the car wasn’t going past the speed limit or swerving without his notice. God knew that the steering on the BMW was as smooth as it sounded.

“If you stare any longer at it, it might all evaporate before we even reach Richmond,” he teased, but with a level of caution that said that he was treading on uneven grounds here. Was Adam alright, the caution read.

Whether or not Adam noticed the caution, he didn’t respond.

Noah didn’t know what to do with that. Silence reigned around them, the ambience washed out by the silence.

The question that came from Adam was silent compared to the blow of the air-conditioning and the sound of the tires against the gravel. Noah almost missed it. “Why?”

What did Adam mean? _Why_ did Kavinsky give them his spit? _Why_ did they have to do this? _Why_ was this happening?

“Why what?”

“What did he do?” Adam’s voice was small and curious and nothing, if not tired. It made Noah want to reach out and comfort, but he didn’t know how Adam would react to touch. Vulnerability had its thorns, despite its appearance.

“You mean Kavinsky?” Noah asked, his eyes focused on the road ahead. A gaze on the source of that vulnerability would break the conversation somehow, Noah knew.

The sound of a sigh of cotton and hair against leather told Noah that Adam had just nodded.

“You want the short answer or the long one?” This story definitely wasn’t one he could tell, so he hoped that Adam would pick the short answer. If Ronan was ready enough to tell Adam the whole story, then he would have already.

“Which one makes Ronan less mad at you?”

Rip out the band-aid, Noah told himself, which was odd since he knew he wasn’t going to hurt from this.

“Kavinsky used to give Ronan drugs, you know that already.” Noah explained, his eyes still on the road, his hands tight on the steering wheel. By then, he didn’t know whether it was because he was resisting the urge to reach across the gear shift and give Adam a comforting hand or because he might punch the wheel from the memory of Ronan telling him this in the same casualty he presented Adam with now. One thing was for sure: Adam wouldn’t have appreciated both.

“They did things while high, and Ronan decided that he didn’t really like those things when they did it. Just that Kavinsky was gone by the time Ronan remembered and acknowledged that he hadn’t consented to a lot of things. Probably a few weeks after he got clean.”

The silence returned, and this time, the vial was put between them, inside the empty cup holder by the gear shift. Adam pulled his feet up in his seat, turning away from Noah.

“So Kavinsky doesn’t know what he did to Ronan.”

Noah looked at Adam then, at the curve of his hunched shoulders. He saw the selflessness Ronan endeared, saw the empathy and sympathy mingling around his expression.

“No,” he said finally, stepping on it and feeling the purr burst into a growl beneath his toes. “Kavinsky doesn’t know. He should, though.”

Then hung a new silent agreement between them, one that said that they would never tell Kavinsky.


	14. takes someone to come around to show you how

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dying was easier to stomach when no one wanted you, so Ronan pushed away.

**RONAN**

The forest around him sounded peaceful, with leaves and grass flowing and bending with the push of the wind, and with yellowish rays of sunlight landing on moss-covered trunks and soil. Rivers and creeks roared with life, twinkling light finding its way into his peripheral vision.

Ronan wished he could enjoy the atmosphere, the way he could smell dew and feel the convection of the air. His bare feet were cold on the mossy forest floor, and his shoulders were slick with quickly drying sweat. Winter had finally let relinquished its grip on the forest, and spring was making its presence known. Ronan wished he could stay human like any normal temperature-sensitive werewolf, if only to appreciate the presence of warmer seasons.

The lodge’s directions were clear in his head, and after a few minutes of walking inside familiar wood, he spotted it. Nothing had changed its appearance, even the absence of his BMW, since he last shifted days—two or three, give or take—ago.

The porch still sported the couch from New Year’s Eve. Blue and Gansey were too lazy to move it, Ronan suspected. With the seasons changing, he wondered if he should mention that it might get mauled by local scavenging raccoons, if he still hadn’t hunted the damn rodents as a wolf yet.

The floorboards were warmer than the dew-dampened soil, he noticed as he stepped onto the porch. He saw the pile of clothes left for him, as Gansey and Blue had done when he shifted days before. On second thought, Ronan considered not telling them. Maybe he could give them a good spook by walking into the lodge in nothing but his birthday suit, after all, experience serves as a better teacher than any reminder.

He heard Gansey and Blue shuffling in the kitchen when he was done with his whole door-to-door search. The muddy footsteps should have told Blue enough of a story if she ever wandered by the hallway. As it was, she was too busy sucking face with Gansey on the kitchen counter to wander into the now-muddy hall and bask in Ronan’s masterpiece.

Ronan rolled his eyes and moved through the kitchen, not caring to bump into the pair as he perused the insides of their refrigerator for anything to chew on before any important meal time.

Gansey jolted when Ronan bumped his knee, and Ronan could imagine his face coloring visibly before he stammered, “Oh, Lynch! Welcome back to the human species. Hah.”

Ronan grunted in acknowledgment, shoving a piece of bread into his mouth and grabbing a jar of peanut butter from the bottom shelf before shoving the refrigerator door close. When he turned, Blue was scowling openly at the mud that Ronan had tracked into the hallway while Gansey made a futile effort of fixing the ruffled state of his hair.

“We have bread knives by the cupboard,” Gansey said, as if he wasn’t just caught in the act of making out with Blue Sargent. He said it as he caught Ronan about to poke a finger into the jar of peanut butter. “Don’t use your fingers when you eat that, we all eat the peanut butter in this household.”

“I don’t see why the fuck you have to keep telling me that,” Ronan managed through the piece of bread in his mouth, but he turned and washed his hands anyway. “I lived through most of your babying in high school.”

Gansey scoffed, making a move to walk out of the kitchen. “I’ll stop when you show signs of actually being hygienic for a change.”

Ronan chewed his food, because he had some tact and also because he had no intention of continuing the discussion. When he swallowed he said, “Is Noah going to gimme back my car any time in the next few hours? It’s already spring, and I think I deserve more than twenty-four hours of being human again, don’t you? My eyeballs need a change in scenery, and a break from rabbits humping in holes.”

It was Blue who responded this time, unaffected by the crass words from where she was staring scornfully at Gansey with a mop in one hand and a bucket of water in another. Gansey did not protest, only walked up to take the things and moving to clean up the mud trail. “He came by alone last night, says he might be able to bring Adam with him this morning, if he got lucky.”

Ronan tried not to look too happy about that, but failed miserably when he felt that he had to force the small grin off of his face as he stared out the window by the sink. Adam. They haven’t seen each other in what felt like years to Ronan, and he wondered if Adam felt the same.

He wondered if Adam knew he was dying.

The small grin on his face slid off easily this time, and he continued to eat his snack, turning to stare at the counter.

His eventual death was an' easy thing to find out about, with Gansey and Blue shuffling around him with saddened looks. The severity of his sickness at the time was something he was used to pushing down the fear and panic for, but seeing both emotions shown openly on his friends’ actions and interactions made him feel like he was underestimating. The blood, the fevers, the melancholy; all symptoms added up to the wolf, and how the wolf was slowly killing him. Except now, it was speeding up the process.

With a carefully blank look pasted on his face, he ignored the worried glances Blue threw at his direction, and Gansey’s vague protests as he stirred the peanut butter with a finger.

Idly, he wondered if Adam would even come back to see him breathe his last.

 

* * *

 

Ronan never felt and seemed more like a dog in that exact moment.

He jolted from the couch on the porch at the distant sound of exhaust from a silent engine, undeniable amongst the sounds of nature. The sound of twigs being cracked down by four tires was just as undeniable. It only took sheer will power and pride to keep him glued to his seat.

The BMW looked like it always looked, like it hadn’t left Ronan’s side all month long. It looked like Niall Lynch had not died, like Ronan Lynch had not taken it outside the boundaries of his siblings’ care, like it had not hosted the monster in most of Ronan’s nightmares. Ronan supposed he shouldn’t expect his own car to change face, especially since it was an inanimate object, but the thought stood that it was the only constant thing in his life.

Noah stepped out of the vehicle looking worse for wear, more than he did the last one time Ronan saw him. His lackluster features looked even less alive, made him look paler than he already was. Ronan could feel the chill on his arm before he even let Noah touch him.

The passenger side door opening distracted him.

Adam.

Dusty hair was disheveled, as were the thin shirt and loose jeans. Ronan didn’t mind seeing Adam in a suit and tie, so Ronan definitely didn’t mind seeing Adam in casual clothes especially since it made him look less like a thirty year old that life dragged down, and more like his own age.  The bags under the pale blue eyes were undeniable as much as they were prominent, and the blank look on his elegant features looked a little too much like a fairer reflection of Ronan’s own indifferent features. Ronan refused to express his worry by standing up even when every part of his body wanted to bolt out of the porch and tackle Adam.

Relief flooded when light came into Adam’s eyes at the sight of him waiting on the porch, and tears were threatening to flood into his when Adam approached and pulled him up by the arms and hugged him so tight that Ronan almost forgot to breathe. Or hug back.

“Ronan,” Adam whispered, like if he said it louder, the illusion would break. Ronan never lied, there were no illusions with him.

“Hey, long time no see, gorgeous,” Ronan muttered fondly, not resisting the smile on his face this time. “How was dear old DC?”

Adam pulled back, cold eyes searching his face for something Ronan didn’t know what for. He hoped Adam found it. “Not as fancy rich without you,” Adam replied, and leaned in before Ronan could say anything else.

Ronan never forgot Adam’s lips, but kissing them was a new experience every time it happened. Ronan closed his eyes and begged time to stop and give him into this moment and all moments alike.

Adam kissed him like it was the first time, soft and hesitant. Ronan remembered their kiss in the back of a shitty cab, remembered feeling like he was about to get propelled into the sun, remembered the thrill of Adam touching his jaw like he was doing right that instant. Adam kissed him and it was like finding the ground beneath their feet, like knowing that Adam wanted him. Ronan was sure to return the kiss in earnest, made sure to make Adam know that Ronan wanted him just as much. The sigh that came from Adam sounded like the relief that Ronan had felt.

When they pulled away, Ronan said, his voice wrecked and reverent, “Adam,” and they both gave each other small smiles, just resting their foreheads on each others’ for a moment.

The door clicked shut behind Ronan, signaling that Noah had snuck past them in the heat of their moment. Ronan didn’t care. All he cared about was the sad twinge in Adam’s small smile, and the warmth building up inside him at the feeling of Adam’s skin on his.

 

* * *

 

After lunch, Adam and he had slipped into the BMW with neither explanation nor prying questions from the others, which was a decisive factor on Ronan’s ongoing observation. The others knew that he was dying, but Adam, he was still unsure of. It was on this trip that he was going to find out.

The drive to Richmond was silent and companionable, like the ride to the pizzeria on the day Ronan took Adam to meet the gang.

The feel of the engine humming enough to vibrate was familiar and welcome and gratifying. It made him feel invincible and impossibly alive, and immediately reminded him of long summer days spent inside the vehicle, and inevitably of the nights that followed. He was also immediately reminded of the approaching edge of his mortal coil, like a cliff he was driving towards.

“Why Richmond?” asked Adam, breaking him out of the dark curve of his reverie. Ronan was grateful for it.

“What, did you wanna go somewhere else?” Ronan threw back. He shifted into the next gear unconsciously. Adam threw him a cautious glance but said nothing else, not even to answer the question.

“You didn’t answer my question when you got there this morning,” Ronan said instead, because he could feel the silence slowly slip into something a little too awkward for his liking. “How was DC? I haven’t been in the city for months.”

Adam shifted in his seat at the mention of distance from the city, and Ronan saw in the corner of his eye how the other fidgeted, saw the pained look on Adam’s face clear as the day was bright.

Adam knew after all, then.

Ronan had experience with hiding, and knew how to hide. He knew what he saw so he called it out even though he knew what it was Adam was trying to hide, “What are you fidgeting about?”

“Nothing,” Adam lied. Ronan clenched his jaw a bit, giving Adam a sideway glance. It was enough to coax a sigh out of the other, but not the truth. “I had a long week, Ronan.”

Ronan knew the statement to be true, but the fact that Adam didn’t tell him outright gave him an odd feeling. Something stuck between warmth and dread. Adam was trying not to tell him that he was dying, trying to give him the benefit of living without being conscious of death’s presence. Adam knew that Ronan was dying, but he didn’t know that Ronan knew this just as much as he did.

Ronan didn’t pry for the truth.

“Noah took me out to McDonald’s a lot,” Adam offered goodheartedly.

Ronan snorted. “Was he at least civil?”

Adam must have found some kind of edge to Ronan’s voice because he finally turned to look the other in the eye. “It was platonic and extremely unhealthy. But yes, he was perfectly civil.”

Silence followed again, and this time it was deliberately awkward. Ronan resisted the urge to smile easily.

“Ronan, wh—”.

“I _know_ , Parrish. Jeez, I trust you that much, and I trust Noah that much too.”

They didn’t say anything afterwards, and Ronan didn’t want to feel guilty for it.

 

* * *

 

They were sitting on a random bench in a random park in Richmond, ice cream cones melting in the gentle afternoon sun when Ronan broke and finally said, “I’m dying.” He told Adam this, and Adam’s pleasant expression turned blank.

Adam lowered the ice cream cone to his lap, but didn’t meet Ronan’s eyes. “I figured you’d know, but I was hoping you didn’t.”

“What,” Ronan muttered, his tone taking a dark edge but he didn’t mean it. He felt the anger and wanted the poison of it out of his system, so he twisted his words to frustrate Adam before he snapped. “You didn’t think my own fucking best friend would tell me?”

Adam looked at him then, gaze sharp and knowing, and Ronan found himself frustrated that he’d succeeded at frustrating Adam. “You and I both know that Gansey would tell you jack shit, even if his life depended on it.” Adam’s voice was hard, when he spoke, but it was never assuming. Ronan wondered what had transpired when he was a wolf, wondered at the ground that his best friend and his lover stood upon. “That is, if you actually ask him outright. He’d give you _anything_.”

“Which is exactly how I found out,” Ronan retorted, hackles rising to the edge that Adam offered. “He’s not subtle about the devotion, okay, but he’s at least subtle about the concern because he knows that I fucking hate it. I wouldn’t expect you to see how much he fucking coddles me as of recent, since y’know, you’re too busy in the city.”

They’re silent again, the mood between them turning somewhat sour. Ronan tried not to shiver at the patience that Adam was showing. Beside him, he felt the anger boiling beneath the surface, threatening to peak but never really flowing out.

“We have a way,” Adam spoke up, watching ice cream dribble down his thumb with empty fascination. His voice was carefully devoid, but the insistence sounded too much like channeled anger. “A way to help you out.”

Ronan bristled at the suggestion, especially since it was Adam giving it, and especially with the voice Adam had presented it in. He didn’t need a way out, and he told Adam just as much. “I’m fucking peachy with death if you mean to keep me alive through drugs.”

Adam made a low sound of disagreement in his throat, dropping the ice cream cone down the trash can beside the bench they sat on. The gesture struck Ronan as something Adam would never do, and it spoke wonders with how Adam was currently falling apart in front him. “That’s not—we had a plan, before you were sent out, okay?”

“Oh, yeah?” Ronan challenged. “Elaborate then.”

Adam looked at him, eyes frustrated and terrified, and Ronan felt guilt seep in somewhere beneath the course of anger that blanketed it like snow.

He didn’t want Adam to hate him, he told himself, but his mouth wasn’t listening to his intentions, and it was reminiscent of how he was before the wolf, before Kavinsky; it was how he behaved when he hadn’t cared to be alive when he was walking the edge between life and death, with the image of his father’s brains beat in by a tire iron stuck in his head, and with the BMW purring approval under his grip on the stick shift as he went past the speed limits on drives up dangerous curved roads hugging the mountains.

Dying was easier to stomach when no one wanted you, so Ronan pushed away.

But Adam looked at him, his eyes earnest and blue, and those pale eyes had never been cold, because cool colors were always the warmest. Adam looked at him like he wanted to say those cliché and frustrating three words and said, “Ronan, we’re pushing every limit to make sure you stay alive. I—I haven’t known that much about you in the past months, but if you’re willing to help yourself, then we’ll be waiting. I want to find out more about you _from_ you, so I would definitely prefer it if you’d stay alive.”

Ronan still expected the three words to come out of Adam’s mouth, but the words Adam had spoken were the right ones, because he relaxed and said, “You’ve got your chance to find out now, Parrish. I’m still not sure your plans will actually save me with me knowing jack shit. So, fucking elaborate already.”

Adam gave him an expression that may as well be an “I’ll take what I can get” without the words attached to it. The thin line of his lips suggested that he wasn’t really feeling too peachy about it, but Ronan wasn’t budging any until Adam told him what this was about.

Adam told him.

Words spilled out of Adam’s mouth just as ice cream dribbled down Ronan’s fingers, leaving his joints sticky and sweet as he listened intently. He ignored the stone in his throat as it traveled down to his stomach, ignored the chapped skin on his lips in favor of the sticky and equally chapped flesh of his own knuckles.

“We needed spit, the infected kind,” Adam said, and Ronan looked up, because there was a twinge of something in his tone: fear, anticipation, weakness. Ronan honed in on it, brows furrowed.

Adam caught on and sighed. “Elaborating,” he reassured with a resigned tone, one that was a half-step to anxiety. “Getting it from Cole St. Clair wasn’t an easy option, and Gansey didn’t want the folks in Minnesota too involved, so we used the next best thing.”

Ronan raked his memory for any other packs, any other people like them. Adam was cured, and so were the rest. There was the fear again, this time clear on Adam’s face. Ronan gave him a look of incomprehension.

“I was going to tell you, Ronan,” Adam aid. Ronan felt even more confused, and the fear was beginning to seep in through the waves rolling off of Adam’s body. “Gansey didn’t like the plan, no one did. But Blue and Noah agreed—no, we _all_ agreed that it was the most practical plan we could manage, and we didn’t have any other options out on the table.”

“Adam,” Ronan called out. His tone sounded odd, the waves of fear coming from Adam finally affecting his own voice. “Where the fuck did the spit come from?”

“It’s—No, it’s not, it’s not okay to keep this from you. You deserve to know, you would _hate_ me,” Adam muttered more to himself, though he was referring to Ronan.

Then it clicked.

And the anger lifted the stone of fear out of his stomach. His nerves dissolved as he clenched his jaw. The fact that Blue and Gansey, even _Noah_ would think of keeping this piece information from him made him want to punch something, made him want to lash out. Ronan was going to have _his_ spit in his own fucking system, turning him into a wolf, enhancing the sickness. He didn’t know if it would have been better to have known this or not. He didn’t know if would have made it easier to live with himself either way.

Ronan’s self-doubt made way for anger, “You were never here for me, weren’t you, Parrish.” It was neither a question nor an accusation. Adam knew, and Adam was telling him. Ronan knew how unfair he was being, but the anger was never going to be fair for as long as Adam sat next to him, close enough to snap at.

“You’re the _exact_ reason I’m here, Ronan,” Adam pleaded, not at all annoyed with the unfairness of it all. It made Ronan angrier, somehow. “Please, just understand.”

Ronan stood and threw the wasted cone at the trash can beside Adam, barely clipping Adam’s head.  He didn’t miss the full-body flinch that tore through Adam’s patience with a strike of fear. He didn’t pause, scorn hiding the fear underneath his skin, “No, I understand. I’m dying, and you all have to fucking plan how to keep me alive. You all have to decide for me, and you don’t even need to ask for my goddamn opinion, because I’m too fucking incompetent when it comes to my own goddamn life.”

This anger shouldn’t have been directed at Adam, because it was Gansey and the others’ faults. He watched with bitter resentment and suppressed dread as Adam’s hackles rose just as he stood to be on the same level as Ronan. He took a step and glowered, making Ronan aware of how Adam was an inch shorter than him.

Adam muttered, “Well, I’m sorry for putting in all my efforts into trying to keep you alive, Lynch. It’s not like I don’t fucking care about you. Besides it wasn’t like I was going to tell you before they told me to inject you with it, like I’m doing, _right now_.”

Ronan huffed, found words falling out of his mouth before he thought of saying them, “Were you thinking of doing that before or after I got too sick and had no choice?”

Adam let a frustrated groan bubble up his throat, fueling the burning fire of Ronan’s anger. “What?! I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

“Oh, let me just shut my mouth, because _clearly_ you’re not spilling because I made you.”

Adam’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and Ronan realized the spectacle they were making. He gave their audience a slow, sweeping glare. They dispersed easily.

“Look, Ronan,” Adam said, his voice level once again. Ronan’s anger cooled exponentially at the tired way he said it, letting the fear float up like air bubbles in soda. “I don’t know what happened with you and Kavinsky.” Ronan tried not to flinch at the sound of _that name_ in Adam’s voice, tried not to let the fear become too obvious. His lashing out was a temporary solution, and letting it out on Adam was unfair.

He was shocked out of his own reverie as he felt Adam’s hand close in around his own, sticky with melted ice cream, and sweaty in the heat of their argument. “Ronan, I’m not going to start to understand why until you tell me just how much the thought of him hurts you. I have my own ghosts, and I’m hoping we could just tell each other and forget about it, if we could. But fact of the matter is that we, Noah and I got the spit. Kavinsky relented and gave us the spit and we have it back in the lodge, waiting.”

Ronan looked him in the eye again, saw determination and hope in cold blue eyes, emphasized by the dark crescents under his eyes. He twisted his hand and made it so that their fingers intertwined together, not minding that their palms are sticky, as long as he had Adam’s hand in his.

“I’m sorry for not telling you soon enough. But we have it now, and it’s going to be your choice,” Adam said, his voice sounding resigned and just as hopeful as his eyes, hopeful that Ronan wouldn’t chose death over a life with him. Ronan hoped that he realized that Ronan would choose him over death any day, for as long as Ronan could have him. “And I’m going to stand by your choice ‘til the end.”


	15. the truth runs wild like kids on concrete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan looked ahead, leaned forward to capture Adam’s lips, and found himself not looking back.

**RONAN**

They were in Adam’s apartment later after dinner. After cooling down from their ice cream trip with a seemingly-endless drive, they both got too hungry to talk. Ronan brought them to a small family diner near the edge of DC and ate amiably between quips and silly questions about nothing in particularly. It was a nice change, something to distract Ronan from his demise.

Ronan couldn’t help but smile at the picture he took of Adam, staring thoughtfully out of the diner windows, not knowing that Ronan was taking a picture. His head was perched up with one hand, his pinky brushing the edge of his lips. The neon lights by the window shone lime green, painting his features in an unpleasant mix of yellow fluorescent, neon green, and black.

Somehow he still looked breathtaking, and Ronan couldn’t help but breathe deeply at the implications of that taking its toll on him.

Ronan sat on Adam’s bed after showering, tapping away from the picture to text Gansey and the others about how he’ll get the shot when he got back the next day with Adam the next day.

Ronan threw his phone behind Adam’s bedside table quickly after sending the text, hoping to never look at his phone screen or to touch his phone ever again as he listened to it clatter down into the space between the wall and the table. Especially not with Gansey’s name on it, with his anger still too raw and ready to pounce at the first chance he got to rip his friends a new one.

He really hadn’t meant to snap at Adam earlier. He felt the guilt of having poured his anger from years of the others’ coddling out at the only person who cared to properly communicate their concern with him.

The bathroom door opened, derailing thoughts.

He jumped a bit, fists unclenching from their unconscious white-knuckled grip on the sheets of Adam’s bed. Blinking, he looked as Adam crossed the room in nothing but a towel around his waist.

Ronan tried not to stare.

He failed. Of course he did.

There were scars covering most parts of Adam’s upper body, some scattered along his legs like they belonged with the strands of blond hair. These were scars that Ronan has seen once, but never really took the chance to observe properly.

Most of them were spread around by Adam’s arms, and a particularly nasty one sat by his right shoulders. As a person who had scars as well, Ronan did not want to pry about their origins. As a person who’d already snapped at Adam and feared Adam’s rejection, Ronan didn’t want to even think about prying.

Adam turned, saw Ronan watching him and smiled almost shyly before saying, “A picture lasts longer.”

Ronan stood, took two steps to close the distance between them, and hovered his fingers over the scar on Adam’s shoulder, felt the warmth radiate from the space between. Adam closed the space that Ronan left for him, pressing his body against Ronan’s, a hand reaching up to try and pull Ronan even closer.

Ronan leaned down and dropped a kiss on Adam’s nose, smiling at the blush that bloomed upwards from Adam’s neck.

“Hey,” Ronan said.

Adam pecked him on the corner of his grin and said, “Hi,” before leaning back in to kiss Ronan properly. Lost in the feeling, Ronan’s hands roamed from Adam’s hips, then up to Adam’s back, one hand staying at the nape of Adam’s neck as the other one went back down, resting on the hem of the towel.

“What did,” Adam squeezed in between kisses and sighs, “What did the others say.”

Ronan hummed, pulling away briefly to reply with a, “Nothing yet. They’ll be okay with it.” He meant the others would be okay with them staying at Adam’s for the night, but not necessarily okay with Ronan ignoring their texts. Adam didn’t need to know that. He leaned down to press a kiss by Adam’s jaw, and started to go lower, ridding his mind of thoughts about the others, of anger at the unfairness of it all. He pressed his lips down at Adam’s pulse, engulfing himself in to the feeling of Adam’s arms wrapped loosely around his waist, the shallow breaths Adam seemed to be taking now.

Adam held a hand up between them, pushing lightly at Ronan’s chest. Ronan dropped his hands from where they were positioned and went with the push, not wanting to push any boundaries. He waited as Adam got his breathing in check, pointedly keeping his gaze away from the towel by looking into Adam’s unfocused eyes.

“When I said, earlier,” Adam started, finally focusing on Ronan. Ronan reined it in and focused on what Adam was saying, tried not to get too lost into the cold blue. “When I said that I wanted to tell you about my ghosts, I meant it.”

Ronan nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets to hide the full body shiver that came with the words. “You mean now?”

Adam nodded.

Ronan regarded him, thought about all of the things he knew about Adam, and thought about all the things he didn’t know about Adam. He didn’t know Adam before _this_ —whatever _this_ was. He didn’t know when Adam’s birthday was, or when he decided to move out of Henrietta. Hell, Ronan didn’t even know what college Adam went to, or if he had any siblings.

They weren’t supposed to last too long, a voice in the back of his head said. One night stands weren’t supposed to be a lingering thing.

Now, Adam wanted to tell Ronan something about himself.

Ronan couldn’t find himself disagreeing, surprised that he found a deep curiosity about who Adam really is. The fact that Adam was offering was an honor in and of itself, one that Ronan didn’t think he earned, but if Adam wanted to then…

Gently, he took Adam’s hand and pulled them both to the bed, pulling his feet up in favor of making this seem like a comfortable experience for Adam.

Adam took a deep breath, eyes never having left Ronan. The line of his freckled shoulders was curved to a slouch, resignation painted all over him, determination coloring his cold blue eyes. Ronan was as entranced as ever, and didn’t even notice the few minutes that passed as Adam gathered his courage.

It was all silence before Adam spoke up, almost a whisper, “Ask me where I got my scars.”

Ronan felt caution claw up his throat, wanting him to protest.

Instead, he relented.

The hand that wasn’t gripping Adam’s lifted to hover over Adam’s damaged shoulder, as Ronan had done before. “This one.”

Adam’s face blanked before the pain flooded his eyes, as if he was remembering how he got it. Ronan didn’t let his concern reign over his actions, knowing that concern would force Adam to retreat into his shell of scrounged up confidence. Instead, he squeezed Adam’s hand, urging him to keep talking.

Adam gave him a weak, appreciative smile. It was barely enough to cover the pain and fear in his eyes. “I got that one from when I was eleven. Broken bottle.”

This alerted Ronan almost immediately, made him wary of Adam’s next words. It was a cheap way to lighten up the mood, but Ronan joked, “In a bar fight?”

Adam’s smile faltered, his eyes looking shiny under fluorescent lights. Ronan reigned in his regret just as he did his concern.

“Eleven-year olds can’t get into bars in Henrietta,” Adam quipped, but it didn’t seem to lighten up either of their moods. “It was summer when I got that. I worked all day under Boyd, my boss from the auto shop, and when I got home that night, it seems I didn’t get to tidy up my summer reading, so my dad threw a book at me. The bottle came in after a few punches.”

It sounded so normal when Adam said it, and Ronan had to snap out of it to feel the dread creep up like vines made of ice. Adam didn’t look at him then, his hand trembling under Ronan’s.

Adam fiddled with the edge of his towel, hanging by the knee. Ronan internally cursed himself for not letting Adam dress up first, watching  a full body shiver overcome Adam’s body, making him a bit weary for signs of shifting before reminding himself that Adam was cured.  

Adam continued, “My mom didn’t help stitch me up that night, just told me that it was my fault for leaving my messes behind and to stop crying before my dad saw. He would have thrown something bigger than a bottle by then.

“I spent the rest of the afternoon with the dog behind the house, watching the sunset. That was the same day I started saving all my money. I had the next seven years planned with faulty contingencies and weak ambitions. Anything to distract myself, to keep my head out off the dusty gutters and outwards to the city. Then,” Adam took a shaky breath, his free hand going up to touch his left ear.

There was a long pause, and Ronan thought he wouldn’t continue so he dared to ask, “Then what?”

Adam took a shaky breath, dropping his free hand on his lap. “When I was seventeen, he found my tuition for the partial scholarship that I saved to keep going to Aglionby. We were running on little to no access to electricity then. He blamed it on me, and when I told him that he could have worked to pay the bills too, he pushed me down the stairs and I hit my head. A neighbor saw and called the police when they saw blood. I permanently lost hearing in my left ear, or so the doctors said.”

Ronan drew patterns on the back of Adam’s hand and felt something heavy settle on his chest. He felt anger bloom in his chest, anger at Adam’s father, anger at Adam for not fighting back. He shoved it down with some difficulty, kept his breathing in check. Adam glanced at him, as if feeling the heat of his anger from the grasp of their fingers, his eyes full of tears to the brim and fearing rejection.

“He wasn’t pleased about that either, wasn’t he,” Ronan stated, his voice deceivingly empty.

Adam shook his head. He was crying now, and the vulnerability emitted from each shaking sob made Ronan reach out to shield him from any prying eyes, even though they were alone in Adam’s bedroom. Adam’s tears dampened his shirt, and his hands were wrinkling the front of it. Ronan didn’t care.

“I pressed charges,” Adam whispered. “I won the case.”

Ronan shushed him, pulling Adam closer by wrapping his legs around where Adam sat. His hands rubbed circles on Adam’s back, his chin settled on top of Adam’s bowed head. In clipped mutters, he fumbled, “You don’t need to say any more. It’s—You’re good. You did a great job, Adam. You’re here now, with me, with your money and your—your job. Fuck, I’m no good at this, please stop crying.”

Adam let out a laugh, sounding exponentially better than he was when he was telling the story, as if he were taken back to his life in Henrietta while he was retelling his tales. Ronan could relate too much, but he did not admit it to himself.

“Hey, you’re not crying,” Ronan observed, mock-accusatorily. Adam nodded, hugging back now.

Ronan considered the tale Adam had told him, and said, “I didn’t grow up in Henrietta.”

Adam lifted his head to look at Ronan, indicating that he was listening. “I lived in this town called Singer’s Falls a few miles away, in a plot of land my father owned. I met Gansey when I was thirteen, and my brothers were going to the same school as me. We were all happy until I found my father bleeding out into the ground with a tire iron stuck in his skull.”

Adam took a deep breath for him, and Ronan felt like he breathed in all the oxygen.

Lightheaded with the truth, he continued. “Kavinsky was how I coped, because Gansey made me promise not to drown myself in alcohol. K and I drag-raced around town like we owned it; took drugs and drank hard liquor like it was coffee, just your typical rich kid bullshit. Then, the sex started,” Ronan said, his throat feeling unbearably dry after saying that name again in the first time in months, and retelling the story for the first time in years. “Soon enough, I didn’t like it, and the rest is history.”

It was.

They both breathed, taking up as little space in the room as possible as they curled up around each other. Ronan slowly pulled them down to bed. Adam closed his eyes, and they processed their pasts, tried to realign their interpretations of each other with what they just discovered about the other.

Adam opened his eyes, cold blue looking bright and hopeful and a little bit cautious. “Think we can forget it now that we’ve told each other?”

Ronan leaned in to kiss him and pulled away to say, “Maybe.” And the stupidest part about it was that Ronan actually believed himself when he answered Adam. Adam sighed and gave a small smile, like he knew that Ronan believed it and was relieved.

They stayed in a comfortable bout of silence after that, Adam closing his eyes again. Ronan took this as a chance to regard Adam. He took note of the freckles and the frown lines, of the vague dimple by his cheeks and the beauty mark by the corner of his temple.

Ronan thought about Adam, how he didn’t behave like who he thought his history made him out to be. Ronan thought about Adam and slowly found courage to think that maybe he could be like that too.

They were in a long enough silence before Adam asked, eyes still closed, his voice barely a whisper but loud in the minimal space between them, “Think I should get dressed?”

Ronan hummed in thought, hand reaching up to draw lines with his fingers, from Adam’s thigh to his waist. “Dunno. Depends, do you normally sleep naked?”

Without replying, Adam grabbed his hand and pulled it back down to the knot of the towel by his hip. Ronan undid the knot, keeping his eyes on Adam’s eyelids as he pulled off the towel.

Cold blue peeked out from underneath dusty lashes, the piercing look stirring Ronan’s guts as Adam closed the space between them. Ronan met him midway.

Adam sat up, lips still locked with Ronan, moving to straddle the taller man. Ronan let him, hands stroking gently down Adam’s thighs, eyes lidded as he looked at Adam above him.

Fingers found their way behind Ronan’s head, pulling him closer. A tongue darted out, Adam’s, nudging lips apart, sighing in the space between them, their sighs sounding slick and heavy as the tension churned. Ronan strained in his borrowed sweatpants, making a sound at the back of his throat as Adam rutted up against the material, already hard.

Adam pulled apart to mouth at his jaw, brushed his teeth against the line of Ronan’s throat. “Adam,” Ronan whimpered, his fingers digging into Adam’s thighs. “Fuck.”

Adam hummed, hands resting by Ronan’s waist, then slipping under to slide his cold fingers up and down Ronan’s sides. He pulled the thin shirt up enough to indicate he wanted it off, and Ronan was eager to oblige, gathering as much of the fabric as he could by the handful at the back of his neck and pulling it off in one swift motion.

Adam’s eyes were lidded as he stared down at Ronan, and Ronan couldn’t help the quick breaths coming from his chest at the way he looked, with his hair mussed up and damp, with his cock leaking precome on Ronan’s sweatpants.

Adam put a hand on his chest and pushed him down onto the bed. Ronan relented against the push, leaning on his elbows to look at Adam. Tentatively, one of his hands found its way back to its hold on Adam’s thighs.

“You’re beautiful,” Ronan mumbled, voice almost reverent. He thought this as Adam reached down to stroke himself. He thought this as he felt Adam grind down against him. He thought this as Adam kept his gaze on Ronan, jerking himself off on the red spreading out from Ronan’s chest to his shoulders, to his face.

Ronan didn’t touch him again, not until Adam choked out a, “ _Fuck_ ,” which meant he was close. Ronan moved to grab Adam’s wrist, didn’t miss the whine that came from the other man. He leaned up and kissed Adam, fierce and rough, and a bit apologetic from keeping Adam from sweet release.

Ronan was too aware of the fact that the front of his sweatpants was wet with his and Adam’s precome, too aware of the fact that he felt just as close to the edge as Adam from just watching. He told Adam just as much as he pulled himself out of his pants.

“I’m so close from just watching you,” Ronan said, voice low, almost a growl. Adam hissed a bit, groaning at the implication of that. “You looked like you were enjoying it so much, so good. You looked so good, Adam.”

Adam leaned down and kissed him, sloppy and wet and slow, hand slipping between them to stroke Ronan just as Ronan reached out to stroke him. Ronan laid down completely, letting Adam crawl on top of him to get comfortable.

Ronan felt like it’s only been weeks since Adam and he hooked up, but Adam hasn’t touched him in the months, and his body knew better than his sense of time. They both came too quick, spurts of white dripping between their fingers, down Ronan’s abdomen, on his new sweatpants.

Neither commented, both too stuck in their euphoric hazes, grinning and kissing slowly. Adam laid down on top of him, almost boneless as he dropped down beside Ronan, the grin on his face still remaining as he closed his eyes.

Ronan stroked clean fingers on Adam’s cheek, watched the other’s eyes pop open.

“Hey,” whispered Adam.

“Hi,” Ronan said back. “I love you.”

Adam’s smiled, content and happy and relieved. Ronan found himself seeing a trail that led months ahead, nothing but blue eyes and soft smiles and days out by themselves. Ronan found himself seeing a future laid out right beside him in that soft smile on Adam’s face.

“I love you too.”

Ronan looked ahead, leaned forward to capture Adam’s lips, and found himself not looking back.


	16. i guess it's all working out now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a few minutes, he almost couldn’t believe a whole year had passed since he’d last been here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to thank all of my commenters for giving me enough motivation to finish this, and for school for giving me a reason to procrastinate on projects and actually type this out. I'd also like to thank my beloved friend, Nick, for seeing me through this, thick and thin, buddy.
> 
> Have a good one, folks.

**EPILOGUE**

Adam threw a “I’ll be back for dinner,” over his shoulder as he grabbed his jacket on the way out of the cabin. Blue popped her head from the kitchen, her hair almost always a mess and today wasn’t going to change that any.

“Don’t get eaten by local wolves,” Gansey shouted back at him.

“Or do,” Noah added.

“Be careful,” Blue remedied for both men, settling with giving Noah and Gansey a scornful look from the doorway of the kitchen. Adam quirked a smile and headed out onto the porch.

The forest this year was peaceful and foggy. The sun was setting already, the mid-November air giving him chills that stuck to the bones. It made his nose a little runny but he never really seemed to mind it. Not with the trees looking magical as they swayed to the breeze coming from the north, not with the sound of night owls hooting, and certainly not with the feeling of the moss underneath the thin soles of his sneakers.

Adam breathed in through his runny nose, wiping a bit of the snot off at his jacket sleeve. In front of him, his breath clouded over as he walked past familiar trees and rock formations.

For a few minutes, he almost couldn’t believe a whole year had passed since he’d last been here.

After the talk, Ronan and Adam had gone back to the cabin to give Ronan the shot, and it didn’t take effect until early September. It was a long wait, and the others were careful to keep an eye on Ronan’s progression.

There weren’t any surprise shifts during spring, but there rarely ever were, so they all had waited with bated breath as the seasons slowly trudged through the year. It did not leave Adam as anxious as he’d thought he was, especially since Ronan didn’t seem to be too bothered by it.

Then came late September. It was an incident. Ronan had driven home from work that night, and the moment he’d left the warm confines of his BMW, he reacted. It took Gansey, Blue, and Noah to get Ronan and tranquilize him before someone near their warehouse noticed. Adam had ran over in an instant.

They left for the cabin post-haste, and the trip had such bad-timing that Adam and Noah had to pull over in the middle of highway traffic to get Gansey to hand off the syringe from the window of the Pig and knock the wolf out again.

Gansey had made sure to walk the wolf out into the clearing the moment they’d arrived at the cabin, not bothering with the house yet since they didn’t bring luggage in their rush to get to the cabin. They seemed to have prepared for the occasion, Adam thought, because he was pleasantly surprised to see Gansey carrying the fever around in the pockets of his chinos.

They’d injected the wolf and left.

That was late September. Now, it was mid-November.

Adam stood in the middle of a clearing, knowing that this was the perfect spot to look up and spot where the moon would appear.

Behind him, a twig cracked.

Adam was not surprised by this.

Behind him, there were sounds of shuffling in leaves and bushes.

Adam was not surprised by this either.

There was another sound, one almost sounding like retching from afar.

This piqued his interest.

He walked out of the trail the others had set, walked into the tree line with his heart beating fast in his chest, his breath held in anticipation.

The retching—or what passed as retching—stopped. Pale skin stood out against the warm analogous shades of orange, black lines stark and familiar. Adam felt all the air in his lungs leave.

He stepped on a twig.

 _Ronan_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND, IT'S DONE.
> 
> damn, fuck, i'm so relieved that i finished this. goddamn. If anyone is confused, hit me up on tumblr, you know where it is.
> 
> And so now, the song list for the titles to each chapter:  
> CHAPTER 1: [YOUTH by Troye Sivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io2Yjy3nV_c)  
> CHAPTER 2: [BITE by Troye Sivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLuWMOF6vOU)  
> CHAPTER 3: [When You Were Young by The Killers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ip02FknUo)  
> CHAPTER 4: [Trouble by Imagine Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4l5SLs5u8A)  
> CHAPTER 5: [Gasoline by Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRHNi3QfFlE)  
> CHAPTER 6: [Empty Gold by Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSVQicbrHQo)  
> CHAPTER 7: [TOO GOOD by Troye Sivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iljAm1hoLU)  
> CHAPTER 8: [Torpedo by Eraserheads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A20UBFNNdSs)  
> CHAPTER 9: [Drifting by Nate Eiesland](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwqDy4gp3tg)  
> CHAPTER 10: [Dream by Imagine Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCSX3mM6940)  
> CHAPTER 11: [Everything But You Was Facing North by The Fossil Collective](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOpk6DbPpJ4)  
> CHAPTER 12: [Back To You by WILD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcWvsiQkZE)  
> CHAPTER 13: [THE QUIET by Troye Sivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vykVdJDu28A)  
> CHAPTER 14: [Tear in My Heart by twenty one pilots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nky4me4NP70)  
> CHAPTER 15: [HEAVEN by Troye Sivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp58dhCnkjI)  
> And _finally_ , CHAPTER 16 and Actual Title: [WILD by Troye Sivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3awzvNrKDsg)

**Author's Note:**

> ~~I'll be updating every other three days, and will be adding to the tags the more characters are added into the story. Stay tuned and comments are appreciated!~~
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> My tumblr is [here!](http://stubbornjerk.tumblr.com)
> 
> EDIT (11/01/16): Updates are every _five_ or so days now that school is back. I'm sorry if I'm taking too long, but with stress and my unmedicated depression acting up, it's really a huge chore to push out chapters to queue and edit. I'll try my best to finish this story, though. That, I can guarantee.


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